#because even if he still loves him there is also the lingering resentment. they fought! literally!

[ars0nism]

something about writing a couple who loathe each other as much as they still love each other. something tore them apart years ago and they havent healed, how could they, they were apart the whole time, but then they reenter each other's lives and they want to fix it, they really do, but every attempt at fixing it just makes it worse, every "maybe this time we can get back together" ends in a fight and its over, really, but maybe its not. sometimes while fixing something you end up cutting yourself on the pieces or whatever

[buggysangel17]

Meet The Cross Guild

Summary: You meet your husband's new 'co-workers'. Mihawk realized the worry that came with having you as his one and only weakness. Characters: Dracule Mihawk x Wife!Female Reader (Amihan). Sir Crocodile. Buggy. Word Count: 1,392 Chapter Warnings:  Alternate Universe-Canon Divergence. Mention of slicing someone's body part. (Buggy obviously) lol.

Masterlist | Series Masterlist || Send Me An Ask?

“Who is this?”

To Mihawk, it took a lot out of him to bring you here—in what would now be his new home, a place that would also serve as one of the many places where meetings would take place with the likes of one Crocodile and the annoyance of the fucking clown. But it was a risk he was willing to make knowing that you could handle your own.

After the events as what was your shared home in Kuraigana Island, how you had fought almost in the same par as him, he trusted you enough to be in the same space as two other former warlords that could possibly be a danger to not only himself but to you, his one and only weakness.

“That’s a good costume. The nose even looks so realistic too.”

He stands corrected.

He had watched Buggy take hold of your face, offended as his nose was now a topic of discussion. But somehow the fear was never once lingering on your face even as the empty threats begin to spill out of the clown’s lips for his nose being acknowledged.

“I’d be careful with my wife, she knows how to wield whatever weapon she could get her hands upon.” He had warned not his wife, but the man that had the utter audacity to hold onto his wife the way he did.

“Wife?!”

Buggy did not even finish the single word before a knife was pulled out of your palms and slicing through the man’s hand, ineffective knowing the Devil fruit the clown had with him. But the shock was all the more amusing in your eyes seeing the lack of blood as well as pain in the face of the clown.

“He isn’t affected by slashing attacks, My Love.” Mihawk had finally explained as you were still utterly confused by everything that the man in front of you was being.

Mihawk watched the arrogance in the clown as he continued to tease his wife about close to invisible because of his powers, but busy as he was with his own thoughts a ghost of a smile had laced the swordsman’s face as you instead pulled out a blunt mace from out of your palm and immediately bludgeoning the man with it knocking him down cold for a good few minutes of peace.

“Thank you.” Mihawk patted your shoulder, appreciating the lack of annoyance for now.

“It seems we have interrupted your time with your wife.” It was now Sir Crocodile that made his presence known, with the lack of an annoying figure that was Buggy, he was free to talk without much of an interruption.

“It’s fine.” You reassured with a smile on your lips, returning both your knife and mace back to your palm right in front of the man.

“It seems we have another Devil Fruit wielder then.”

“She is.” Mihawk finds himself interrupting the man’s line of questions. The less the man knows about you and your background, the better. He trusted you, but the same could not be said about the two men that was now in his home.

“It would be best to keep an eye on her then, Hawk Eye, if the World Government knew about her existence, it would be her head that’s plastered in the Bounty Posters.”

Mihawk has known as much. But he trusted not only himself, but as well as you that you would keep yourself away from much trouble as you possibly could. With this new change in both of your lives, you never resented him for it. In fact, you enjoyed yet another change in your life alongside him. That alone had reassured him that anything that may come, you took to stride.

“She can handle herself perfectly fine with or without me to help her.” Mihawk spoke.

“I’ll leave you three to it. I’ll bring the tea once it’s brewed.” You patted him on the chest and kissed him on the cheeks before leaving the two men to the impending conversation that they would be dealing with now.

“If she finds herself becoming a pirate, she might even surpass you, Hawk Eye.”

“And I don’t doubt you on your statement. But she is content to work by my side for now.”

“But until when?”

~

“They seem—nice. The clown is also a funny one.” You spoke the moment Mihawk had slipped out of the bath he had.

He was welcomed to the sight of you in bed in your delicate nightgown with a book in hand. You were surprisingly in good spirit even with how the entire day played out. Buggy, for all intents and purposes did not back down even after being knocked down cold by your hands. Somehow doubling down in making his entire stay focused on getting on your nerves but somehow you welcomed him with a smile and asking if he wanted any of the pastries you’ve made for the day. But his worry had been more on Crocodile, how his interest in you and your power had unnerved him—he might not have gotten under your skin, but he succeeded in getting under Mihawk’s as much as he did not want to admit it.

Instead of crawling into his side of the bed, he finds himself crawling on top of you, nestling his cheek against the flesh of your chest—this was his side of the bed now for the past few months. His arms wrapped around your waist as your hands now rested on his hair, scratching onto his scalp in the same way that he loved you doing.

“What’s on your mind, Darling?” You inquired halting in your movements.

“Keep going.” He finds himself urging you on.

“You’re so needy.” You playfully complained but obliged to his request.

“It’s not really something you need to worry about. Just a few hindrance that needs to mind their own business.” He began. “We had made an agreement with the clown that he will be the face that is plastered for the World Government to see but I’m concerned about what it would mean if they find out about you.”

“I’m not really worried.” You shrugged, smiling down at him. The softness of your gaze towards him brought him peace that he would have never thought he would deserve. “I’m married to the strongest swordsman in the world, I’m certain and I am very confident that you will not let anything happen to me.”

All his worries, it all magically vanished away at your words. How even when all was said and done, when the circumstance of your relationship was not as ideal as he would have wanted it to be, you still gave him faith that he never truly believed he deserved or earned.

He flipped the both of you until you were now under him, a surprised squeal escaping from your lips from the sudden movement. He smiled immediately pulling you in for a kiss before you could admonish him for the sudden movement.

“I care for you, so much more than I would ever care for anything else in this world. I vow to protect you, to care for you, and to love you until my last breath.”

They never had their vows, and this was the closest thing he could do for it. He will make a reality out of a once forced circumstance.

“Mihawk…” You wrapped your arms around him, drawing him closer, and for a brief moment, the world around you both disappeared. All that mattered was the two of you, your love, and the vows that he had made. It was a promise that would withstand the test of time.

As you finally parted, your forehead touched, and you looked into his eyes, your heart was full of love and gratitude. In the serene moment of peace in your own little space, this was a beginning of a new life for the two of you and Mihawk will make sure you will have the life you always wanted and what you always deserved.

“I love you, Mihawk.” You whispered, voice filled with emotion.

Mihawk smiled, his eyes glistening with love. Your lips met once more, sealing your vows and love in a kiss that would linger in your hearts for as long as you were both alive.

[zeciex]

A Vow of Blood - 94

Warnings: This fic includes noncon, dubcon, manipulation, violence and inc3st. Tags will be added as the fic goes on. This is a dark!fic. 18+ only. Read at your own discretion. Please read the warnings before continuing.

Summary: “You will be trapped by the obligations of love and duty, unable to escape the web of expectations others have woven around you,“ the witch said….

Chapter 94: Once in grief, heart of black but forced in green II

AO3 - Masterlist

25k words.

The Great Sept was awash in shadows, despite the shutters of most windows being thrust open to let in the light from outside. Yet, the shadows seemed to reign within the sacred space. From each point of the sept’s seven-pointed star structure, a sliver of golden light spilled in, illuminating each statue of the gods stationed at the center of each point. These statues faced inward toward the sept’s heart, where a large, round altar stood surrounded by hundreds of flickering candles. While each idol had its own altar at its feet, the central altar was dedicated to all of the gods, signifying their unified presence. 

Above, from the expansive, domed ceiling, light cascaded through the windows, its intensity waning as it delved deeper into the sanctum. The air was thick with the scent of beeswax from the large candlesticks scattered strategically throughout, their flames battling the ever-encroaching gloom with bursts of warm, golden radiance. The flickering light cast moving shadows that played across the stone floors and walls, adding a living element to the stillness of the sacred space.

Aemond stood at the heart of the Great Sept, with only the High Septon beside him, facing an altar ablaze with candlelight. 

The gods had never granted Aemond anything; as the second son, he was merely the spare. And everything he possessed, he had fought to claim for himself. 

As a child, Aemond had attended the dragon-riding lessons at the Dragonpit, despite not having a dragon of his own. He often lingered in the shadows, a fierce envy igniting within him as he watched his brother and nephew-cousins bond with their dragons. His only companion during those times was Daenera, who, like him, was also without a dragon. Aemond had never understood why Daenera did not share the same bitterness and envy–he couldn’t grasp how she could accept her status as a Targaryen without a dragon so readily. He had surmised that perhaps it was because she was a bastard, fearful that her Targaryen blood was not as pure as his own–or so his mother had told him.

The air had been thick and warm, as it was now, though it had been heavy with the scent of dragons–smoke, and charred flesh, and ash mingling together–and not the sweet, cloying scent of incense and beeswax from the many candles littering the Sept. It was there that his brother and nephew-cousins had played their cruel jest, strapping wings to a pig and presenting it to him in mockery. The Ping Dread, they had called it. Their laughter had surrounded him, ringing in his ears as he had descended into the cavernous depths beneath the Dragonpit.

Insult after insult had marked his childhood, a relentless stream of disrespect and indignity that wove itself into the fabric of his early years. His brother and nephew-cousins had never hesitated to remind him of what he laced, never missed an opportunity to make him feel lesser–to make him feel less Targaryen than even the bastard children who had dragons hatch to them. 

The seed of resentment had taken root all those years ago in the depths of the Dragonpit, where Aemond’s desperate effort to claim a dragon of his own began–a fierce attempt to prove he was no less Targaryen than any of them. 

Each time he had ventured into the bowels of the Dragonpit, he faced failure. The dragons housed there had already been claimed, and once a dragon accepted a rider, it recognized no other. Despite this, Aemond had persisted tirelessly. He tried again and again, driven by a relentless determination to demonstrate his worth and secure his place within the Targaryen legacy. 

Night after night, Aemond had bowed his head in fervent prayer to the gods–prayer for a dragon of his own. He prayed for his father’s acknowledgement, yearning for a moment when his father might see him, recognize him, and care for him. He prayed for relief from the constant mockery of his brother and nephew-cousins, wishing for their respect rather than their scorn. Most desperately, he had prayed to be freed from the crushing loneliness that gnawed at his soul.

Faithfully, he had performed the rituals: lighting candles during his visits to the sept, attending masses alongside his mother. Yet, no divine answers came. There was no dragon for him to claim. His father continued to overlook him, turning a blind, guilt-ridden eye away. His brother and nephew-cousins never ceased their jeers, offering him no respect, only a deep scar that split his face–a permanent mark of disdain. And through it all, he remained isolated, perpetually alone. 

When the chance had finally arisen, presenting a dragon without a rider, Aemond seized with an desperation that eclipsed all other concerns–he had long since ceased praying to the gods. He had set himself before Vhagar, the largest and oldest dragon in the realm, and demandes she accept him as her rider. This was the opportunity he had yearned for–a dragon of his own, and with it, he thought he would gain the respect and acceptance he so desperately sought. 

And in that moment, as he stood before the beast and bellowed his command, the dragon’s massive jaws gaped open, the heat from her breath searing the air as flames began to gather at the back of her throat, Aemond questioned if he had prayed to the wrong gods. The primal power of Vhagar, so close and overwhelming, made him wonder if the divine had ever truly listened, or if his fervent pleas had been in vain.

His grip on the reins had been so fierce his knuckles had turned bone-white, and he had felt his bones groan under the strain of his hold. As Vhagar’s powerful wings beat through the air, his heart had pounded so forcefully it felt as though it might burst from his chest. In that moment, with Vhagar beneath him, Aemond had felt an exhilarating sense of invincibility–a god himself, or as close to one as he would ever be. He had claimed the most formidable dragon in existence, and with that claim, he believed he had finally attained his greatest desires. 

The price Aemond had paid for claiming Vhagar had been steep–an eye, cruelly carved from its socket by one of the bastards who had mocked, humiliated, and tormented him throughout his life. 

Claiming the dragon had changed nothing. There was no justice for the blood he had spilled, no reparation for the grievous injury he had suffered. Instead, the seed of injustice had taken root in the soil of resentment, and from that, his rage had flourished.

His father had never truly acknowledged him, even when Aemond had gone to great lengths to be the ideal, dutiful son. The respect he had longed for remained elusive; instead, he was the subject of whispered conversations in shadowed corners, his scarred face drawing looks of revulsion.

Even the love from his mother, while genuine, was marred by shame and guilt—it was a conditional affection, a painful truth that Aemond had come to realize now that he had sought justice for himself. 

Claiming a dragon had changed nothing–except for him. In his loss, he had forged himself into a weapon, burying any notion of love deep within his heart where it could neither grow nor see the light, left instead to rot and fester in darkness. To the world, he presented a mask as hard and cold as steel, as sharp and merciless as the blade he wielded with ease.

Duty had demanded sacrifices from him, and sacrifice he did.

For so long, all Aemond had desired was to be respected, to be revered, to be seen as someone of greatness. He had admired The Rogue Prince for the respect he commanded, a respect born of both fear and honor. As a second son and a dragonrider, Aemond too yearned to carve his name into the annals of history as a war hero, to be remembered not just in fear but in awe. And beneath all the layers of ambition, the desire to be loved still lingered, buried yet persistent.

In pursuit of this, he had made his sacrifices. He spilled blood. He let go of his hopes and wishes for genuine respect and reverence. He sacrificed his honor and, ultimately, his very name.

If respect would not come through admiration, then he would claim it through fear. His honor was irrevocably stained, yet in its own twisted way, this realization liberated him. Aemond accepted the grim truth of his legacy: his name would be carved into the annals of history, not alongside the Rogue Prince’s for his daring feats, but as the Kinslayer. He was destined to be remembered in infamy, condemned by gods and men alike, forever marked by their curses.

The gods had never bestowed upon him any gifts, nor had anything else come to him freely. Everything he had, he had fought for and seized with his own hands, claiming each fragment of his existence through struggle and strife.

Standing in the sanctity of the gods, he felt no divine presence; he believed they had abandoned him long before he became a kinslayer. Had the gods shown him mercy or ensured justice when he most needed it, perhaps they would have been with him as he rode into the storm, perhaps they wouldn't have placed the boy who stole his eye in his path. Maybe then, things would have been different. But the gods had not been with him, and he suspected they never truly had been.

If the gods now thought of him, they did not think of him kindly–not with the blood he had on his hands.

As Aemond shifted his gaze, a gold dread settled in his chest, his heart seeming to freeze as his eye locked onto something–or rather, someone–on the far side of the altar. His breath caught, as he stood in silence, watching the figure that lurked just beyond the flickering flames of the altar. The light cast eerie shadows across the figure's face, lending a deceptive warmth to skin that was otherwise as pale as death itself.

Death had its grip firmly on him–his skin devoid of life, his eyes clouded with a milky blue haze that spoke of the grave. The figure stood there, drenched to the bone, dark curls clinging to his scalp. Water dripped steadily from his soaked clothing, forming small pools on the cold stone floor of the sept. 

There he was, the boy he had killed.

The boy who had made him a kinslayer.

The boy whose blood had cost him what he loved… 

Yet, not everything was lost. Though her love might forever elude him, she remained his–his bride, his wife. The boy may haunt him all he wanted, it would not change a thing. Whether it was vengeance or justice, it no longer mattered. He was dead. Aemond would carry the weight of that haunting gaze–those lifeless, milky eyes judging him silently. 

Aemond’s gaze fell to the cloak draped over his arm. His fingers brushed lightly across the plush, velvet fabric–rich green in color, adorned with a golden, three-headed dragon embroidered elegantly on the back.

He was under no illusions about the gods playing any part in this union. There were no divine blessings gracing this marriage; it was a product of his own ambition, a result of his personal decree. Underneath the soft glow of the candles and the veil of decorum that draped the ceremony, Aemond knew a hidden, festering truth lingered–a wound concealed, yet far from healed.

The heavy doors behind him swung open with a resounding throng, the sound slicing through the low murmur of conversation and resonating through the vast, domed ceiling. The sound reverberated within Aemond’s chest, his heart thrumming with its echo. All eyes turned towards the source of the light that split the darkness, streaming through the widening gap–a sliver that expanded until the light became almost blinding in the shadowy room. 

Aemond took a moment to steady his heartbeat and ensure that his composure remained intact–his features set into a mask of smooth, cutting steel, an expression of indifference crafted to rival those of the gods that seemed to gaze down in silent judgment. As he turned to face the blinding light, he had to squint against its glare, momentarily disoriented by the dazzling brilliance that seemed to cleave the sept in two. 

At first, she was little more than a dark silhouette, swallowed up by the blinding light that streamed through the sept’s entrance. She was light refracted, a splintered, ruinous divinity–an image of a goddess, both unlovely and lovely, like a half-forgotten memory of something divine. 

Was this what the moth saw just before its wings succumbed to the searing embrace of the flame? Aemond believed so, for in that moment, he felt a similar pull, as if he were the moth drawn into the fire. A fierce heat ignited beneath his skin, engulfing him, consuming him, as he stood transfixed by the sight of her.

Aemond gritted his teeth, swallowing hard as he beheld her. His heart thundered violently within his chest, each beat threatening to shatter his ribs and burst forth, falling to the sept’s floor for all to see–exposing how pathetic and vulnerable and weak it truly was, corrupted by love, poisoned by love that had rotted him from within. He clung to his mask, steeling himself, gripping it so tightly in fear that those gathered would see what lay beneath it. 

Desperately, he clung to his mask of indifference, gripping it with the facade tightly for fear that those gathered might glimpse what lay beneath. Beneath the cloak, his hand tightened into a fist, the ring on his finger pressing uncomfortably into his skin. 

As they began their procession into the sept, following the stream of light pouring through the open doors, she seemed to absorb the light around her, drinking in the radiance. The beads on her gown shimmered like morning dew catching the first rays of the sun–she seemed like a star descended from the heavens to walk among them. Each step she took was accompanied by the soft whisper of her gown brushing against the floor, the sound resonating in the deep silence of the sept. 

With each step, she drew nearer to the altar–nearer to him. The brilliance of the light dimmed as she approached, swallowed by the encroaching shadows that clung stubbornly to the space, despite the hundreds of candles flickering in defiance of the darkness. 

As she was led down the aisle towards the altar, there was a delicate, almost fragile quality to her demeanor. She resembled a wounded bird, her smile a blend of ineffable melancholy and sweetness. Beneath the crafted facade of porcelain and ivory, there was hidden steel–an armor not unlike his own. 

Her gaze, fixed on the flickering flames at the altar, refused to meet his. This act of defiance, while deeply endearing, also cut him sharply. He longed for her eyes to turn towards him, but her refusal only heightened the sting of rejection, a familiar restlessness that prickled beneath his skin. It was a sensation akin to needles against his nerves, a reminder of the bitter sweetness of her presence–an affliction he craved, even if it came with a burning resentment. 

They came to halt just before the altar, with Aegon allowing Daenera to withdraw her hand from the crook of his arm as he faced her. Aemond’s gaze narrowed slightly, his lips pursing as he glared at his brother who had moved to cradle the sides of Daenera’s face. His brother’s touch was almost tender, as if it were familial affection, and Aegon brought Daenera’s forehead down to his lips, bestowing a kiss that seemed both intimate and patronizing. Daenera’s expression shifted to one of bewilderment, a slight frown creasing her brow as her lips pressed together in confusion and discomfort. Her gaze flitted nervously down the aisle, her brows knitting together in uncertainty as he held her face a moment longer–too long. Before he withdrew, he let his knuckle gently trace over her cheek–a gesture that might seem tender and affectionate if Aemond didn’t know how his brother. 

Finally, Aegon turned away from Daenera and faced Aemond, a smirk curling at the corners of his lips. The smirk was charged with amusement and seemed to mock Aemond’s pointed glare.

Fury simmered within Aemond, his fingers itching to unsheathe his sword and cleave Aegon’s hand from his body, but he was all too aware of the absence of his weapon and the presence of witnesses. And he knew better than to let his rage explode in such a public setting. Aegon smugly retreated to stand with their mother and grandfather, the latter offering him a reproachful glance. He reached out to briefly ruffle his son’s hair as the boy stood before his mother. 

The bewilderment lingered on Daenera’s face as she watched Aegon retreat, her eyes blinking slowly before she composed herself. As she turned towards the altar, her blue eyes lifted to meet the High Septon’s gaze–pointedly avoiding Aemond’s. She took a tentative step forward, then paused. 

At that moment, a tightness gripped Aemond’s chest, as if his ribs were constricting around his lungs–tightening around his heart. He suddenly felt like that young boy again, alone in his suffering, refused the one thing he ever truly wanted. 

Daenera’s gaze drifted over the crowd before she slowly turned away from Aemond entirely, making her way towards Helaena and Jaehaera. With a soft smile, she extended the bouquet of flowers to the young girl, her voice a gentle hum, “Will you hold this for me?”

A radiant smile lit up Jaehaera’s face as she let go of her mother’s hand to take the bouquet, which was nearly as large as she was. Although Helaena would likely end up holding it eventually, for the moment, Jaehaera glowed with pride at being entrusted with such an important role.

Once the bouquet was settled in Jaehaera’s arms, Daenera straightened to her full height and turned back towards Aemond. She walked deliberately back to his side, her gaze remaining steadfastly away from him. As she took her place next to him, her expression was once again a mask of porcelain–an impenetrable facade of serene grace, betraying no hint of vulnerability. 

The High Septon’s voice rang out, commanding and resonant, cutting through the silence of the sept like a clap of thunder. “You may now cloak the bride and bring her under your protection.”

Turning away from Aemond, Daenera adjusted the veil, carefully lifting it from her shoulders along with the cascade of her hair that tumbled down her back. The removal of the sweeping of the veil unveiled the gentle curve of her neck, where her earrings swayed with the motion, catching Aemond’s eye. His gaze was inevitably drawn to the faint line of soft pink drawn on her skin from where the blade had kissed her. Though it had healed, a subtle scar remained, a mark on the tender flesh that, while not deep enough to be permanent, would take its time to fade. 

As Aemond unfolded the cloak, its deep green hue appeared almost black in the subdued light, though its true color shone through when it caught the light just right. When he draped the cloak over her shoulders, he noted the subtle tension in her neck, the fine hairs at the base of her skull stirring as a shiver seemed to travel down her spine. 

The lingering scent of roses clung to her skin–sweet and flowery with undertones of saffron and raspberry, and a hint of something he couldn’t quite place. The fragrance filled his senses, warming his blood and settling in his stomach, sending a shiver through him.  A tingling sensation prickled beneath his skin, the desire to reach out for her itching at his fingertips. Yet he exercised restraint, allowing his hands to fall and settle behind him as he straightened his spine. 

As Daenera turned back toward the High Septon, her hair cascaded elegantly over the cloak, with the veil gracefully following suit, settling softly over both her hair and the cloak. Aemond’s gaze, too, shifted forward, focusing intently on the High Septon as the ceremony continued.

The boy’s silent figure lingered by the altar, shadows seemingly coiling around him as rivulets of water trailed down his face and soaked clothing. Motionless, he made no move to acknowledge his sister or intrude upon the scene; he merely stood there, an eerie specter that continued to haunt Aemond with his presence.

The High Septon directed his gaze toward the King and Queen, his tone respectful as he addressed them, “Your Grace,” and “Your Grace.” He then turned to acknowledge the Dowager Queenwith a respectful nod before addressing the assembly as a whole.

“My lords and ladies,” he began, his voice resonant and commanding, “we stand here in the sight of the gods and men to witness the union of man and wife. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever.”

The High Septon extended his weathered hand, silently inviting Daenera to place her own within his. As she complied, the heavy sleeve of her gown rustled softly against the fabric of her skirts, her hand coming to rest gently in the Septon’s grip. 

Then, he extended his other hand toward Aemond. He lifted his palm, the deep scar running across it visible, glowing in the candlelight–a lingering mark of the love they once shared; the testament of it. 

As the Septon brough their hands together, he placed Daenera’s delicate, soft hand into Aemond’s calloused one. The contact sent a shudder down his spine, which he struggled to suppress, his heart pounding violently against his ribs–beating much the same as it had when he had claimed Vhagar. Her skin felt unnervingly cold against the warmth of his own.

A ribbon, symbolizing unity and connection, was then delicately wound around their clasped hands. This act served as a tangible representation of the vows they were about to make, physically binding them together in a gesture of their newly forged bond.

Once, her hand had not trembled as it did now. It had been warm and steady, her palm gently meeting his, their blood mingling in a bond that neither of them fully acknowledged at the time. For a long time, it had been a creeping vine, slowly touching upon everything. This creeping love had flourished in the darkness, thriving in the night and the spaces between the shadows and the heart.

His gaze drifted to the altar behind the High Septon, where flames burned brightly, and the candle wax dripped slowly down the stone slab. At the center of the altar, the seven-pointed star was etched deeply into the stone. 

Aemond found it strange that he had felt a deeper sense of divinity back when they had sat alone before the hearth’s flames, enveloped in darkness with only the flames as their witness. There had been something sacred in that moment when they had cut their palms–when they had shared their blood. 

Now, as he turned his attention back to Daenera, he observed her intently. The flames cast a warm glow over her delicate features, flickering in the blue of her eyes–eyes that stubbornly continued to elude him. He found her denial cruel, even now, as they stood so close, hands tied together. She ignited in him a feverish desire, a longing not just to possess but to be wholly possessed by her. 

The love Aemond felt for Daenera was of a nature separate from the divine sanctity preached by the Faith or the sentimental ideals told to children. He understood that it was marred by darkness, corrupt and corrupting, a love that was as vicious and obscene as it was consuming. It was born from the shadows, a dark flower growing from tainted soil–an inherent reflection of its twisted, obscene and flawed essence.

Yet, amidst its darkness, there was an element of purity–a facet of this love that was beyond the sanctity preached by the Faith, deeper than any tale told to children. Even a flower that grows twisted, possessed its own haunting beauty. 

As a boy, he had yearned for love, a longing that had been ruthlessly bullied out of him, carved away until he rejected any hint of weakness. And love was weakness in the purest form, wasn’t it? He had sworn never to seek such vulnerability again–determined never to be perceived as weak. That desire had been buried deep within him, denied and discarded. Yet here he was, a scar burning across his palm, having sought that very weakness he abhorred. 

He found himself ensnared, tormented, and utterly consumed by the intoxicating sweetness of her poison–even in its cruelty. The yearning he harbored for her suffocated him; he choked on it, drowned in its dark allure. He loathed this weakness, the restless unease it brought, for it exposed the soft, pathetic core of his rotten heart. 

When does love truly begin? At what moment does the knife sink so deep that the flesh weeps with love? Aemond had cut himself open on this love for her, bleeding and wounded, yet still willing to endure another wound, just for a single kiss–just for a fleeting glance. 

If the gods were ever inclined to heed a prayer of his, he hoped it would be this one: either to liberate him from this torturous love so that he can fulfill his duties to his family, or grant him the strength to withstand the weight of her hatred. 

It seemed the gods had born Aemond with an insatiable hunger–the longing of it, a hungry desire, a craving to possess and be possessed. 

He had long starved himself of his desires, had swallowed his longings, denying his ambition and wants for years, claiming only what little he could. For so long, Vhagar had been his sole solace, the only refuge from his hunger. But now, he would not deny himself his single true desire. He would claim Daenera as his wife, even if it cut him open. He would harden his heart around the vulnerability she inspired, protecting her there even if she clawed and tore at it.  

The High Septon spread his hands wide, holding them aloft as he called upon the gods, his voice resonating through the heavy silence of the sept. “We invoke the Father, to protect these two souls from their enemies and ensure that any wrongs against them are met with justice; the Mother, to bless this union and keep it safe and fruitful–”

Aemond felt something stir within him at the invocation, a feeling clawing its way from the darkness into the light, neither entirely pure nor wholly corrupt, but imbued with a deep reverence. His heart pounded against his ribs, threatening to burst forth as a deep hum emerged from his chest. It flowed from his lips in an ancient vow, long buried and mostly forgotten. 

“Isse aōha perzys nyke rijībagon.”

In your fire I worship. 

He had spoken those words to her that night–the night when they had cut their palms and mingled their blood, binding their veins together in a shared vow. Though it felt like a distant dream, Aemond recalled it with startling clarity. In that moment, the world had seemed to dissolve into insignificance. All ties of duty and responsibility vanished, leaving only his hunger for her and the two of them alone in existence. 

Back then, they too had been enveloped in shadows, the warmth and light from the hearth licking at their skin, much like how the hundreds of candles now tempered the chill lingering in the air of the sept. That moment had been far more intimate, a baring of hearts as profound as it was unspoken. 

Aemond had known it even then; deep within him, the realization had gnawed at his consciousness and echoed through his bones. He had desired her as his wife, shrouded though his feelings were in denial and pretense. His longing had been so intense that it had even driven him to seek out his father once he felt her slipping from his grasp.

He yearned for the days when she had gazed upon him with affection–with love. He ached for the moments when her eyes had met his with understanding, prying beneath his mask, erasing the deep, persistent ache that followed him like a shadow, soothing the deep-seated loneliness that had settled within his bones. 

But he would accept her scorn as long as she was his. 

As Aemond spoke, her gaze rose to meet his, her blue eyes flickering with a tremor of uncertainty. She looked at him in bewilderment, confusion, and disbelief–she looked upon him as a girl would behold a thing once cherished, that had come to destroy her in the end. 

The High Septon’s voice rose solemnly in the hushed silence in the sept, “We call upon the Warrior, to grant these souls with the courage needed to stand firm against adversity, and to protect their sacred union from the evils seeking to pull them apart; the Maiden’s grace, to fill their hearts with love and tender joy!”

A low, reverent murmur fell softly from his lips as Aemond watched her closely, “Isse se vāedar hen aōha prūmia mazeman lyks. Isse aōha ondos, iā egros lēda skore kostā gaomagon naejot nekēbagon hen skoros iksis aōhon.”

In your breath I find life, in the beating of your heart I find peace. 

In your palm, a blade, with which you may use to carve out what is yours.

In the utterance of those words, Aemond found both rot and reverence. They evoked a memory–one where Daenera had pressed a blade to his throat, its edge a dangerous whisper against his skin. She had wielded the power to press the blade deeper, to end his life with a single, ruthless stroke, and drain him of life–she could have cracked his ribs and torn his heart from his chest. 

Yet, she had refrained. Despite her resistance, her refusal to voice it–despite the silence that followed–there was an unmistakable thread of love in her restraint, reluctant though she might be to recognize it.

In that fleeting moment of hesitation, Aemond found a sliver of hope–imperfect and twisted though it was. This love, betrayed and broken, was nonetheless a form of love, shaped by the sharp edges of their intertwined fates. And even in its twisted, deteriorated form, it was something he clung to desperately.

“We ask the Smith, to fortify their bond, crafting from their spirits a connection as resilient as the finest steel, capable of withstanding the trials of time; the Crone, bestow your wisdom upon them, lighting their path with the lantern of foresight and understanding, guiding their steps through life together.”

Her gaze remained on him, the fire from the altar reflecting in the deep blue of her eyes–reminiscent of a sun blazing against the night sky, tears barely held at bay. Her lips parted, releasing a trembling breath.

In that moment, Aemond felt the urgent press of her nails against his skin, a sweet stinging marking his flesh as she dug her claws into him. “Ondoso aōha prūmia rests ñuhon.Nyke tepagon ao ñuha jorepnon.”

By your heart mine rests. 

I give you my prayer.

“And from the Stranger,” the High Septon’s voice rose with solemn authority, “we ask that he not claim them before their time, but instead grant them a long and loving life together.”

The High Septon’s invocation reached out to the gods who had long been indifferent to him, who had never answered his own pleas. Aemond did not seek the divine favor of the gods who had abandoned him–would they even hear him if he did? Instead, he sought a divinity shaped by something far more visceral–one forged in fire and blood, far removed from the distant indifference of the gods he knew. 

Aemond concluded this vow with a voice that held both resolve and raw intensity, “Isse aōha nesh, morghon kesan gīmigon, se isse aōha perzys kesan zālagon…Ñuha jorrāelagon, bisa nyke vow naejot ao ondoso Perzys Ānogār.”

In your embrace, I will welcome Death; in your fire, I shall be consumed. My love, this vow I make to you with fire and blood.

Daenera’s eyes, a stormy sea of blue, held a tempest of emotions–the cornflower blue of willowing fields mingling with the deep blues of dusk and dawn, relentless waves crashing upon the shore mingling with the blue of fleeting dreams. In that sea of blue, a fierce resentment burned with such intensity that Aemond could almost feel its searing heat against his flesh–a consuming fire that promised only to reduce him to ashes in the wake of its wrath. Within this blaze, there was a strange sense of intimacy–only hatred born of love could bring such intimacy. 

Her voice slipped through the space between them with the subtlety of a hidden blade pressing between his ribs, each word furthering the blade, letting it sink into his flesh. “Aōha kivio, pōnta vāedagon lēda se echo hen pirtir.”

Even your vows sound like a betrayal.

The accusation stung, and perhaps it was a betrayal, both to the gods who had long ignored his pleas–who remained still his gods–and a deeper treachery–a betrayal of his own heart, laid bare and vulnerable. He betrayed himself, and in this, he revealed a weakness he had long sought to conceal–a weakness he had long sought to rid himself of. 

In the bite of her nails, Aemond felt her silent demand for him to hold his tongue, for him to keep his words burning in his throat to choke on. The sting of her touch held a dark reverence–a perverse sort of devotion only hatred born of love held. And like a sinner seeking absolution through the infliction of pain, Aemond welcomed the sting, knowing well that there was no true absolution for him, but accepting the pain with a twisted sort of gratitude. 

His love for her was a brutal thing, verging on viciousness–an intensity that he understood as the only true way to love. For him, love was akin to a blade working a wound, a relentless assault of teeth, claws, and shredded flesh. It was a raw, bloody vulnerability, given and received in equal measure, an all-consuming force that left both of them exposed and scarred.

The High Septon’s gaze flickered between them, his voice rich with gravitas of tradition and divine solemnity. “Look upon one another and speak these sacred words,” he instructed. “Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger, I am theirs and they are mine from this day until the end of my days…”

Aemond’s voice was steady as he began, “Father, Smith, Warrior–” as Daenera spoke the same words. They continued in discorded unison, their voices intertwining in the sacred vows, “Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger…”

Their gazes remained locked on one another, the faint whisper of flames fluttering in the silence that enveloped their words. A tremor threaded through her voice, eyes wide and wet as she stared back at him, the corners of her lips quivering. 

“I am hers…” Aemond declared as Daenera answered, “I am his…”

“And she is mine…” He continued, voice steady.

“And he is mine…” Daenera echoed, her voice soft but firm. Her grip on Aemond's hand tightened, her fingers curling and pressing into his flesh with a vindictive intensity. The tips of her fingers dug into the spaces between his bones, twisting his flesh, promising to leave the sting of red crescents on his skin.

Together, they intoned, “And with this kiss, I pledge my love from this day until the end of my days…”

Gently, Aemond raised his free hand to her face, tenderly brushing away the tears trail. Daenera neither moved closer to welcome his touch nor recoiled from it; she merely endured it with a quiet resignation. His hand lingered on her cheek for a moment longer before he leaned in, capturing her lips in a quick, aching kiss. It was fleeting, yet devastating in its intensity. Her lips were soft, but there was a coldness to them, a distance that stung him more than any blade ever could. As their mouths met, he tasted the bitterness there–bitter like the dark wine he liked, bitter like the poison that he had come to crave.

Aemond’s heart ached with the need to linger, to lose himself in her, to drink deeply from her as if she were the sweetest nectar–desperately pathetic for it. He knew well the taste of her lips, the pull they had on him, and how he was drawn to them despite knowing it could destroy him. Her lips, though soft, were distant, and even in this intimate moment, she felt like something just out of reach.

It was a kiss that seemed to solidify their vows, a silent pledge made before the watchful eyes of the gods. 

The High Septon’s voice cut through the silence, rising with a solemn authority as he declared, “Let the gods and all present bear witness to this union!”

He raised his hands towards the heavens, as if drawing down divine favor to imbue his words with sacred power. “Let it be known, from this day until the end of days, Daenera and Aemond are united as one, bound together in the sight of the gods. Cursed be he who seeks to tear them from each other, for their bond is holy!”

As the High Septon concluded his oration, the solemnity of his words hung in the air, a profound declaration of unity and commitment steeped in the traditions and beliefs of the Faith of the Seven. “They are one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever!”

The High Septon carefully untied the ribbon that had bound their hands, his movements deliberate and measured. The soft fabric brushed against Aemond’s skin as it slipped away, signaling the end of the ritual. Though their hands were now free, the vows they had exchanged had irrevocably bound them together in a more profound way.

Lucerys presence lingered just beyond the altar. He hovered there, a silent witness to the proceedings, his unseeing eyes fixed on them, judging, watching–a cold reminder of the past that refused to stay buried, refusing to be forgotten.

As they turned to face the court, the air within the sept seemed to shift. They stood side by side, a unified front, their hands still clasped together as though the ribbon hadn’t been removed. The quiet solemnity that had enveloped the sept was slowly replaced by a growing murmur of approval, building into a robust applause that reverberated through the grand space. The resonant sound filled the ornate, arched ceilings of the sept, reverberating off the gilded stone. 

Aemond felt the weight of the court’s gaze settle upon him, a familiar burden he bore with practiced ease–steel concealed beneath a veneer of calm. His lips curved into a self-assured smirk as he bore their judgment. 

Together, as the applause washed over them, Aemond began to lead Daenera, and their procession, down the aisle when a youthful voice pierced the air, halting them. 

“Aunty Dae!” Princess Jaehaera shouted, much to the dismay of her nursemaid, her voice followed by the patter of small feet over the smooth stone of the floor. The young princess darted towards Daenera, her arms filled with the bouquet of flowers she had been given to hold earlier. “Your flowers!”

Daenera’s lips curved into a warm, genuine smile as she accepted the flowers with a gracious ‘Thank you.’

“Can we have lemon cakes when we get back?” Jaehaera asked with hopeful eyes, moving out of the reach as her grandmother came to quiet her from interrupting the procession. 

“Of course, you can have as many cakes as you’d like,” Daenera replied, her tone soft and indulgent. Jaehaera’s face lit up with a radiant beam, her joy palpable as she was swept into the embrace of her nursemaid. 

With a decisive, yet graceful stride, he guided his wife forward, each step marked by the soft rustle of her skirts. The sound of their footsteps, muted beneath the applause, echoed against the stone floors of the sept. The court began to follow after them as they led the way. 

They moved into the column of light streaming through the open doors, the golden rays catching on Daenera’s gown once more, the beads shimmering with a delicate brilliance. In the recesses of Aemond’s mind, a poetic notion flickered through his consciousness: he was the night itself, cradling the radiance of a star, guiding her across the sky in a loving dance. 

Ascending the steps into the daylight, they emerged onto the landing that overlooked the plaza below. The sky above was a brilliant blue, the sun beginning its slow descent towards the horizon. Aemond guided Daenera to the edge of the landing, their presence announced by Ser Rickard Thorne’s resonant voice:

“Prince Aemond Targaryen and his wife, Princess Daenera Targaryen!”

As Ser Rickard Thorne’s announcement echoed across the plaza, the crowd erupted into cheers and adulations. Aemond gazed down upon them, observing the shifting masses of people as their hands reached towards them. It was as if they sought to touch upon them. Despite their enthusiasm, Aemond felt detached, viewing them with disdain; to him, they were mere mud beneath his heel–a sea of commonality, their attire practical and drab, tinted in various hues of brown that matched the earth. 

The hands that surged towards them were as telling as the faces: weathered and worn by hard labor, stained and rough, clawing at the air in a desperation that bordered on primal. Pathetic. 

The cheers that rose from the crowd were not for him; Aemond knew that if they reached for him, it was not in reverence but in violence–they sought to tear him limb from limb and wrench the sapphire from his eye socket as they tore the ribbons of his bowls out of him. It was a cruel death, and in their eyes, he was all too deserving of such a fate.

At his side, Daenera waved to the people, her expression softened by a gentle smile. He wondered, with a tightening in his chest, whether the crowd would turn on her if given the chance now that she was his wife. Would they rip at her dress, snatch the silver and gold from her hair, claw into her flesh in their wild fervor?

The thought of their hands, stained and rough, ravaging her was anathema to him. He resolved silently that he would not allow it. Any attempt to harm her would be met with swift retribution. He would see to it that anyone who dared lay a finger on her would lose that hand. 

Aemond’s watchful eye scanned the crowd when he felt Daenera’s hand slip from his grasp. The loss of her touch struck him like the snuffing out of a warm flame, leaving his skin tingling with its absence. He let his hand drop to his side, restlessly twitching.

His attention followed her as she took a tentative step forward, passing her bouquet of flowers into Lady Edelins hands as she did so. Her posture was poised, her spine straight and head held high, though there was a carefulness to it. Moving with deliberate grace, she approached the edge of the landing, her gaze sweeping across the now hushing crowd. 

The plaza descended into silence as Daenera reached out to grasp the wrought iron railing of the landing. Her hands traced the contours of the weathered metal, sweeping along its length as she gracefully bent her knees and leaned forward. Her arms extended fully, her body nearly parallel to the railing as she tilted her head forward in a deep, respectful bow to the assembled masses. 

“The Mother bless you, Princess!” A voice pierced through the silence. “May the Mother protect you!”

The crowd, seemingly moved by her gesture, erupted into a cacophony of shouts and cheers, surging forward with renewed fervor. 

The gold cloaks sprang into action, their voices raised in a command as they pushed the crowd back, striving to prevent them from breaking through the line and storming the steps. The tension between the disciplined restraint of the guards and the swell of the crowd grew. 

Suddenly, a shout cut through the clamor, piercing and clear: “All Hail Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen! The Rightful Queen!” It was quickly followed by another, the crowd’s voices swelling, “Seven blessings to Lucerys Velaryon!” 

Just as the clamor swelled, Ser Criston Cole intervened from behind them with a decisive tone, “We should get back to the Keep. The crowd is getting restless.”

Heeding his advice, Aegon and Helaena descended the steps, the nursemaids trailing closely behind, each holding one of the twins. Jaejaerys clutched his toy dragon tightly, a frown on his face at the noise, while Jaehaera’s head bobbed slightly, her eyes wide and uncertain. The Dowager Queen followed in their wake, accompanied by the Hand of the King. 

The Kingsguard flanked their procession, their white cloaks fluttering dramatically in the breeze. Their hands rested on the hilt of their swords, ever vigilant and poised for action, ready to draw steel should a threat arise. 

Aemond approached Daenera, his hand finding its way to the small of her back as he spoke softly but firmly, “Come.”

Their gazes met, and she responded with a small, solemn nod, a slight frown on her face. Aemond's touch remained firm yet gentle as he led her towards the staircase. Daenera carefully gathered her long skirts in her hands, lifting them just enough to ensure she wouldn’t trip, her movement graceful and deliberate under his watchful gaze. 

They descended together to second landing, their pace deliberate as they approached the next flight of stairs leading down to the bustling plaza below. As they drew closer, the roar of the crowd grew louder, and hands reached out from between the guards who struggled to maintain control. The guards formed a human barricade, their voices sharp and commanding as they ordered the crowd to step back and make way. Despite their efforts, the narrow path through the plaza seemed to shrink under the pressure from the surging throng, which grew increasingly restless and agitated.

A piercing shout cut through the din, “Cursed be the Kinslayer!” 

The word ‘kinslayer’ echoed ominously through the air, its resonance carrying the weight of venomous hostility as it reverberated among the crowd. 

Aemond drew Daenera close, his hand steady against the small of her back as he cast a wary glance down the narrow path. The crowd pressed against the line of gold cloaks, their faces contorted with hostility and their hands reaching out in a desperate, grasping motion. 

They shouted at him as though he were some cruel man who had lured away the princess of flowers–drawing her from her mother’s protection, binding her in marriage to keep her forever by his side. They painted him a monster. And, perhaps, the accusation rang true. After all, the monster they thought him to be was not so far from the man he was.

“Monster!” Someone hurled at them–at him–the word slicing through the air. In stark opposition to the insults hurled his way, flower petals began to rain down upon them, fluttering through the air like pink snow before settling on the ground where they were trampled underfoot. The sweet scent mingled with the dirt and grime of the city. 

“The Mother protect the princess from the kinslayer!” A voice rang out, its fervent swallowed by the tumult. Almost immediately, another shout echoed through the throng, “The gods protect you from the monster!”

Aemond’s jaw tightened, his teeth grinding as he suppressed the impulse to react. He remained impassive, his gaze unwavering despite the barrage of vitriol directed at him. To him, their disdain was inconsequential–a mere squeak from rats that would not distract a cat from its path. He cared little for their outcries; his focus was solely on the path ahead and on Daenera by his side. 

Amidst the cacophony of insults and outcry directed at Aemond, there was also currents of prayers and adulations aimed at Daenera. Shouts of well-wishes and expressions of admiration were directed towards her, while flowers and petals continued to rain down upon them as they made their way through the narrow passage between the buildings towards the awaiting litter. 

Aemond extended his hand, offering support as Daenera climbed the steps. Her veil fluttered in the wind as she prepared to step into the litter, momentarily revealing the green cloak draped over her shoulders. With a graceful motion, she settled into the plush seat, the fabric of her gown spreading around her. Aemond followed, ascending the steps and ducking into the litter. He positioned himself directly across from her, his gaze lingering on her as the door closed, shutting out the bustling city beyond.

She had been radiant, smiling and waving at the crowd outside, but as soon as the door closed, her smile vanished. It fell away like a fading illusion, her hand drifting to rest in her lap, her demeanor shifting to one of quiet resignation. Her gaze remained on the narrow slit in the window shutters, through which she could watch as they city slipped by as the litter began its journey. 

Outside, the clamor of the crowd was reduced to a distant murmur, muted by the walls of the litter. The noisy throng was mostly swallowed by the relentless sound of wooden wheels rumbling over the cobblestones, the litter jolting and shaking with every bump. Aemond detested riding in a litter. 

The fleeting rays of sunlight played across her face as the silence stretched, heavy and unyielding. Aemond’s gaze remained on her, watching her closely, attempting to decipher her expression–her face was a mask of neutrality, eyes resolutely averted, her demeanor devoid of any pretense or desire for interaction. 

Aemond broke the silence with a tone that seemed almost too forceful. “You look beautiful.”

Daenera’s eyes stayed locked on the narrow gap in the shutters, her refusing to meet his gaze. She answered coolly, her voice devoid of warmth or emotion. “So I’ve been told.”

Lively music echoed through the throne room, the musicians playing with a cheerful energy, their instruments weaving a tapestry of festive melodies that filled the grand space. The low hum of conversation mingled with the music, creating a backdrop of lively chatter and the soft clinking of glasses. 

At the center of the festivities, Aemond and Daenera were prominently seated on a raised dias, positioned before the imposing Iron Throne. Behind them, the twisted wrought steel of the throne loomed like a dark, intricate wreath, its sharp, jagged edges framing their elevated position. Their table, draped in lush green velvet, stood out against the grandeur of the room, adorned with two opulent floral arrangements that flanked them in a rainbow of colors; red, yellow, orange, purple, blue, white. 

The table, set between columns bearing the stern, stone effigies of Aegon the Conqueror and his son Aenys, seemed almost dwarfed by the weight of their gaze. The stony visages of the king's past seemed to watch over the proceedings, their silent presence a reminder of the legacy that had led them to this point. 

The table itself was a canvas of decadence, laden with an array of sumptuous dishes and fine wines, reflecting the opulence of the occasion. Gold and silver platters gleamed under the flickering light from the wrought iron light fixtures above, their surfaces showcasing a feast fit for royalty. Each dish was meticulously arranged, a testament to the culinary mastery that had gone into preparing the evening’s repast. 

Aemond had filled his plate with meats and steamed vegetables. And yet, he felt no desire to eat. 

From his elevated position, Aemond cast a detached gaze over the lively celebration below. Although he was positioned at the head of the festivities, an unmistakable sense of separation lingered within him. It had been barely a week since he had last sat here, celebrated for his perceived victory over the bastard boy and his dragon at Storm’s End–just a week since Daenera had entered the throne room draped in bloody red, mourning her brother's death.

Now, she sat beside him once more, adorned in gleaming ivory rather than somber red–a cloak of green draping over her shoulders. This time, she was not just his betrothed but his wife, bound to him in the sight of the gods and the realm. 

This was what he had longed for–her by his side as his wife. This was what he had fought for, what he had meticulously plotted and schemed to achieve, even going against his mother’s wishes.

Although the satisfaction of finally claiming her as his wife was immense, the sense of victory was diminished by the persistent coldness that lingered between them. Her polite smiles to guests were a veneer over the underlying chill, while Aemond himself offered no more than a sharp, satisfied smirk. Beneath that smirk, though, lay a constant ache, an unspoken yearning that prickled at his fingertips, urging him to bridge the distance between them. 

Daenera offered no pretense, her demeanor cold  and unyielding beneath the mask of formality she wore. She made no effort to engage in conversation with him, nor did she show any desire to. Aemond had expected this, and he refrained from forcing the issue–though it did little to ease the sting of her indifference. Instead, he resigned himself to the chill of her silence, finding some solace in the knowledge that she was now his wife–an unalterable fact that remained, despite the emotional distance between them.

Around them, guests in their finest attire mingled and laughed, reveling in the opulence of the feast. The room buzzed with animated conversation and the clinking of cutlery as the evening’s festivities unfolded. The servants moved deftly among the tables, replenishing goblets with rich wine and ensuring no cup remained empty for long. 

Rows of elegantly set tables stretched between the imposing columns, their surfaces adorned with gleaming silverware that shimmered with every flicker of light. The tables were meticulously arranged to leave the broad central aisle open, creating a clear and inviting path for the evening’s dancing and festivities. Around the bases of the columns, elaborate floral arrangements were wound, while grand vases brimming with blooms stood proudly at the center of each table. The air was infused with the sweet fragrance of fresh flowers, mingling with the rich aroma of beeswax candles and the scent of the lavish feast.

To the right, set apart by a respectful distance, the King and Queen’s table partook in the celebration. The table exuded a grandeur that was both understated and unmistakable. Adorned with regal silver and rich velvet, it commanded a view of the entire room. Strategically positioned, it provided a vantage point over the celebrations while maintaining a dignified separation from the bridal table. The elegance of the table mirrored the room’s overall splendor, ensuring that even in their distinct placement, they remained central to the evening’s events.

A sudden, resounding clank pierced through the hum of music and conversation, drawing every eye in the room. The Hand of the King had risen from his seat at the King’s table, a cup of wine in hand. He discarded the knife he had drummed against the cup before stepping away from the table. The music came to an abrupt halt, the lively chatter of the crowd faded into a hushed silence as Otto Hightower commanded the room’s full attention. 

Clearing his throat, Otto began, his voice carrying the weight of formality and authority. “Upon his deathbed, King Viserys had two final wishes…” His gaze swept over the assembled guests before settling on Aegon, who lounged comfortably in his chair, offering a nod and a faint, satisfied smile. Otto continued, “The foremost being that his firstborn son to succeed him on the Iron Throne.” He paused briefly, allowing the significance of the statement to resonate. “And secondly, that his beloved granddaughter, the princess, should marry the man she loves.”

The room remained silent, the solemnity of the Hand’s words hanging in the air as the crowd awaited the continuation of the speech. 

Aemond caught a soft exhalation from his blind side–a delicate, faint sound that seemed to drift across the space between them, sending a chill down his spine. He turned his head just enough to observe her, noting that the porcelain mask of her composure was still perfectly in place, concealing the steel beneath. Her eyes were fixed intently on Otto, her back straight as a sword, and though her lips curved into a gentle smile, Aemond saw the strain behind it. 

Otto’s voice cut through the silence once more, commanding attention with its authoritative tone. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union between the second-born son of King Viserys, Aemond, and his firstborn granddaughter, Daenera.” He turned slightly towards the bridal table, his voice rising to emphasize the narrative he was crafting. “Much has been said about this union, but allow me to clarify the truth of it.”

With a deliberate sweep of his gaze across the crowd, Otto continued, “Upon the princess’s return to King’s Landing, she and Aemond grew close–as they once were in their childhood. When her mother learned of their friendship, she forbade it…” He paused, allowing the words to echo in the silence. “The princess was commanded to wed Lord Boris Baratheon, and being the dutiful daughter she is, she married her first betrothed.”

Aemond’s thoughts drifted as he idly traced the rim of his cup of wine, a smirk playing on his lips despite the falsehoods unfolding before him. The tale being spun held morsels of truth to it, but it was far from the whole truth. When Daenera had returned to King’s Landing, he had harbored no intentions of welcoming her back. Instead, he had aimed to send her fleeing back to Dragonstone once more. 

He recalled vividly the day she had arrived–recalled it as clearly as the curses he uttered at her return. His focus had solely been on the blade coming at him, which he had parried with skilled precision. It was only when he had caught a glimpse of her entering the Red Keep that his concentration had wavered. Her gaze had been fixed on the towering walls before her, a subtle frown marring her features as she had taken in the sight of what had once been home. 

A sudden jolt of recognition and something far more unsettling had rippled down his spine and settled somewhere low in his stomach. As he had glared at her, the familiar pang of irritation had flared within his chest. His attention had then snapped back to his opponent as he had swung his word at him. It was only after he had made away with his opponent's sword that he had returned his gaze to her. 

Their eyes had met then, and he had felt that uncomfortable twist in his gut–a sensation that festered within him. It had felt as though she had been intruding where she was neither welcome nor wanted. 

The last time Aemond had seen her before her return was at Driftmark; she had been standing on a balcony as he soared overhead on Vhagar. She had looked different back then–her face round and childish,  marked by a bruise on her apple cheek from when he had defended himself. Her return to King’s Landing had only intensified the resentment he had harbored towards her. 

Now, seeing her grown and almost strikingly beautiful, his old grudges were stoked anew. He resented her presence more than ever–resented the feeling of something molten and heavy in the pit of his stomach whenever he had looked upon her.

Aemond clenched his wine cup tightly, lifting it to his lips and taking a long draught of the overly sweet wine. As he set the cup back on the table, his fingers lingered on the rim, twisting it restlessly between his fingers. He brooded over the thought: had Daenera never returned to King’s Landing, her poison wouldn’t have seeped into him so deeply. She would not have ensnared him, worming her way into his bloodstream and, more troublingly, into his heart. Yet, despite his attempts to remain detached, impenetrable, she had managed to do just that. 

Somehow, in their game of cat and mouse, they had managed to pierce through each other’s defenses–prying beneath the armor they each carried to bury a blade into the other, planting a seed that had since blossomed into the twisted flower of their love. 

Despite setting out to destroy her, to dismantle her very being and ruin her so completely that there was no coming back from it, he had never succeeded in doing so. He had been armed with every advantage, every opportunity, yet he had refrained. The only explanation, he mused, was the insidious nature of his own desires–the poison on her lips, a poison he had grown dependent on. 

He admitted, with a pang of bitterness, that jealousy had stirred within him upon hearing of her betrothal to Lord Boris Baratheon, the man he considered a fat-headed fool. At the time, he had been unaware of the true nature of his emotions; all he had known was an overwhelming urge for her return, a yearning for more of the bitter-sweet poison on her lips. 

“After the tragic passing of her first husband, she was bereft with grief. Aemond was a source of comfort to her, soothing her aching heart,” Otto’s voice rang out, furthering the narrative that was far from the truth. “In the solace he provided, an affection blossomed–growing into love…”

In his own mind, Aemond reflected on the nature of their relationship. It had begun as lust, raw and unfiltered. Yet, he mused, love had subtly entwined itself within their connection–emerging long before either of them fully acknowledged it, even before the murder of her husband. 

How could it have been anything else? Only love could compel him to forsake all reason and rationality–forsake his honor and decency. 

“They married in a small, private ceremony, witnessed only by a handful of her servants,” He stated, skillfully intertwining falsehood with truth. They framed these imaginary witnesses as her deceased servants, ensuring they could not challenge the truth of the tale. The dead, after all, held no voice, and their secrets were buried with them. “They hid their union from her mother, fearing her wrath. And no more than a day before his death, they sought the blessing of King Viserys for their marriage…” 

Aemond’s gaze was fixed on the table before him, his eye unfocused as he clenched his jaw. Memories of that night needled at him–standing in the shadows at his father’s bedside, a small figure permission to marry the woman he loved. He had felt like a boy then, cloaked in desperation, finally understanding what he felt was love now that he stood to lose it. He had only ever asked his father for two things: for justice, and for Daenera. 

Yet, his father’s response had been one of sheer disappointment, a refusal that stung with its finality. He had approached him, heart laid bare, only to be met with scorn and disdain.

‘You have ruined her,’ his father had said, ‘Your heart is even blacker than I thought. You are a plague sent to destroy me.’

Aemond pursed his lips, a wave of bitterness flooding his senses. He felt as though he were drowning in it, consumed by the realization of his own actions. He had indeed ruined her–ruined her honor, laid waste to her heart, and betrayed her trust. His own heart, he acknowledged with grim acceptance, was as blackened and corrupted as his father had claimed. 

Otto’s voice rang out, cutting through the low murmur. “And so, here we stand to witness a forbidden love brought into the light of day, as King Viserys wished–blessed by the gods and the realm alike.” 

He raised his cup of wine high, his gesture mirrored by the assembled court. The guests rose from their seats, eyes turned to the newlyweds. “To the happy couple, may your marriage be long and fruitful!” 

“To the happy couple!” The crowd echoed, their voices a chorus of cheer as they raised their own cups in celebration. 

Aemond and Daenera, seated at the head of the room, raised their own cups in a gesture of acknowledgement. Aemond’s gaze swept over the room with practiced composure, the sweetness of the wine doing little to remove the bitterness that lingered on his tongue. He took a long drink, finishing the wine in one go before settling the empty cup down on the table with a muted thud.

As the music resumed, its lively strains wove through the lull of the room, soon to be filled with the hum of conversation as guests returned to their seats and resumed their meals. Otto’s eyes briefly met Aemond’s before he turned and settled back into his place at the King’s table. Aegon, lounging comfortably in his seat, playfully tossed something at his son, a broad grin reaping across his face despite their mother’s disapproving reproach. Alicent chided at him as Helaena, having turned away from her husband, was fully absorbed in watching the children. Her attention was focused on their lively chatter and animated eating, while Jaehaerys, in response to his father’s teasing, cheekily stuck out his tongue. 

Daenera’s voice, sweet and lilting, cut through the din of celebration, pulling Aemond’s attention back to her. Her words carried a deliberate sting–like that of the dragonglass biting into his palm. “Would you care for some wine, husband?”

The question cut through him like a blade, its edge sharp and unrelenting. It was a reminder cloaked in seeming innocence, twisting into his heart with the precision of a lover's strike—deceptively tender yet cruelly calculated. The way she inflicted this pain was intimately cruel, as if she knew exactly where to wound him to inflict the deepest hurt. Husband. Husband. Husband…

Aemond’s gaze followed her with wary–curious–intensity as she extended her slender fingers to grasp his empty cup. His eyes traveled up her arm, lingering on her face, which was poised with an unnervingly calm grace. Her lips, a soft shade of red, curved into a gentle smile that barely masked the sharpness in her eyes. 

“You would do well to consider,” she said, her voice smooth and measured, as her other hand reached for the pitcher of wine. The rich red liquid sloshed around as she lifted it, “that it was during the feast of my first wedding that I began to poison my husband…”

Aemond’s gaze narrowed slightly as he leaned back in his seat, the back of his head resting against the high cushion. He watched her with curiosity, finding amusement in the contrast between the clear, sweet tone of her voice and the subtle threat lurking beneath it. Were he a different man, he might have felt a shiver of fear at her casual confession, but he was not a different man–he knew her darkness.

Her gaze remained focused on the task at hand as she carefully set the heavy glass pitcher before her. She continued, her voice a musing drawl, “I simply added it to his wine.” Shifting her hold on the pitcher, she lifted it again. “It was surprisingly easy–he was already deep in his cups, and his attention was elsewhere.”

She lifted the pitcher once more, tilting it gently as the rich wine inched towards the glass’s rum, beginning to pour with a slow, deliberate stream “The poison rendered him more vulnerable to the effects of the wine,” she explained, her voice smooth and matter-of-fact. The soft splash of liquid hitting the bottom of the glass chimed between them, a fleeting sound lost amidst the swirling music and lively chatter that filled the room.

Aemond’s gaze drifted from her face to her hands. He watched as one hand deftly steadied the glass, her middle finger and thumb cradling it, while the other hand gripped the handle of the pitcher. The golden rings on her fingers were delicate, each set with pearls and small jewels. None appeared large enough to contain a chamber of poison, or so he thought. His thumb absently traced the underside of his own band, feeling the subtle ridge of the hidden lever that concealed the needle.

Her gaze remained focused on the task at hand as she spoke, a soft smile playing on her lips. “He drank so much that night,” she continued, her tone conversational, almost reflective. The dark liquid swirled inside, catching the candlelight with each subtle movement. “I properly didn’t even need the poison at all–he was so deep in his cups. But… I used it to make sure he wouldn’t be…” Her voice faltered slightly, as if searching for the right words. Her lips curled further in amusement, head tilting slightly as she finished, “able to perform that night. And then a little more to ensure he slept soundly and would not bother me.”

A low chuckle bubbled up from Aemond’s chest, a dark mirth that spilled out into the air around him. The amused smirk he had worn widened into something more–a genuine smile of merriment. The memory of that wretched day, watching Daenera marry the pompous, routed stag, brought him a grim sense of pleasure. His satisfaction was not merely in the act of poisoning her husband, but the knowledge that Daenera had decided upon it long before. 

Even then, she had shown herself to be a master of deception–poisoning her husband to evade the marriage bed, and inflicting a cut on her inner thigh to feign the loss of her maidenhead. The irony was not lost on him; it was a deception that concealed the truth of the bedchamber, where Aemond himself had taken her maidenhead. 

As the cup filled, she righted the pitcher with practiced ease. “I became quite skilled at slipping poison into his drinks without detection during my marriage.” 

For the first time since the sept, she turned her gaze fully upon him. Her eyes held a challenge–a dark amusement that played within the deep, unyielding blue. Her head tilted slightly as she watched him. “The poison I used on my first husband intended to be lethal,” she said, her tone laced with a hint of satisfaction that made the hairs at the back of his neck prickle. “Not at that moment, at least. If I had wanted to end his life, I would have chosen something more potent, like wolfsbane.”

Her fingers traced the delicate pattern etched into the glass–a dragon winding its way up the stem, its wings nearly encircling the base, and though he should keep his attention on her hands, he couldn’t help but be drawn to her face–to that wry amusement in her expression. “Wolfsbane, you see, has a profound effect on the body. It depresses the blood flow and hampers bodily functions,  and finally it halts the heart–but not without inflicting considerable agony first,” she continued, her voice steady and measured. “In smaller quantities, it’s less fatal but still intense, causing paralysis while making it feel as though one’s veins are filled with fire.”

Their eyes remained locked, neither of them relenting. Anticipation prickled beneath his skin, his heartbeat a discordant rhythm that was both jarring and oddly familiar. He relished the way she regarded him–amused, knowing, and dangerously alluring, no longer were her gaze filled with cold resentment, for now at least. The fire in her gaze was one he recognized all too well, and one he was willing to let consume him. Tilting his head slightly, he watched her with a blend of curiosity and wariness. 

“Then there’s nightshade,” she said, “which acts quite swiftly. It begins with an irregular heartbeat and a headache, accompanied by an aversion to light. Vision soon blurs, sweat breaks out, and speech becomes incoherent. This is followed by confusion, delirium, hallucinations, convulsions, and, in the end, death of course.”

The casual manner in which she discussed her poisons, the nonchalance with which she threatened him, seemed to seep under Aemond’s skin, sending a thrill coursing down his pine and settling in the pit of his stomach. There was a strangely arousing quality to her words–the lilt of her voice deadly yet captivating. Perhaps it was the sheer rarity of her speaking to him these days that made her words resonate so profoundly with him. He was indifferent to the threat itself; it was the connection, the way she held his gaze that captivated him most.

His eyes dropped to the soft curve of her mouth, and he felt the familiar urge stir within him–an itch at his fingertips to teach out and touch her, to trace her lips with his thumb, to taste their sweetness. 

“Hemlock,” she continued, with a slow, deliberate murmur, “begins with stomach pains and vomiting. It progresses to tremors, muscle weakness, and a gradual loss of coordination. Paralysis then creeps through the body, eventually reaching the lungs. The victim remains conscious for much of this torment, helpless as their ability to breathe is choked off.”

Her fingers traced the rim of the cup, following its delicate curve with a languid grace. Her gaze remained locked with his. “Equally deadly but less known is white baneberry. The berries are highly toxic–just a handful can be fatal to a child, and a few more will do for an adult. It’s one of the gentler deaths; it acts by slowing the heart until it ceases entirely.”

The lively strains of music filled the air, mingling with the animated chatter of guests and the rhythmic steps of dancers on the floor. Despite the exuberance that surrounded them, Aemond’s gaze remained fixed solely on Daenera, his fingers absently tapping a quiet rhythm against the surface of the table.

“Crab’s eye is another poisonous berry. Its effects are more gradual. It induces nausea, vomiting, and convulsions, eventually leading to the failure of the liver. Death comes only after several agonizing days…” She trailed off and drew in a deep breath, her hand caressing down the sides of the glass as it came to rest at its base. The motion briefly caught Aemond’s attention, a subtle shit in her posture that drew him in closer. 

“Then there’s moonflower,” she said, her tone taking on a darker edge. “It’s perhaps the most torturous. It begins with intense thirst and an unrelenting chill, leaving you unable to stay warm. Severe delirium soon follows; vision blurs, you grow incoherent, and often, you’ll experience violent outbursts. Death can linger, from a few hours to days, marked by a slow, excruciating decline.”

At last, Daenera broke their gazes, her eyes drawing to the cup of wine she had poured for him. With deliberate slowness, she slid the glass across the table, her lashes fluttering briefly before she met his gaze once more. 

Aemond pursed his lips in measured curiosity. His eye followed the movement of the cup, the dark liquid within swirling gently against the glass. Though he knew she had every reason to want him dead and could very well have poisoned the wine, he found it hard to believe she would actually do such a thing–let alone risk such an act in plain view, where suspicion would be immediately cast upon her alone.

A groom poisoned by his bride at their wedding feast was the kind of tale that would undoubtedly etch itself into history. Yet, as much as she might harbor resentment, Aemond knew she was not foolish enough to commit such an act. The consequences would be immediate and severe–she would be detained and swiftly executed for murder. Moreover, she would become a kinslayer, just like him, a fate he knew she was determined to avoid–if only to spite him.

If she truly desired his end, it would not be at her own hand, not directly. Aemond still remembered the cold press of the blade against his throat, its ghostly touch still lingering. He fought to suppress a shudder. She had hesitated then, unable to deliver the final blow–a hesitation that told him she could not do it now either.  

What was a little more of her poison, Aemond mused, reaching for the cup. His fingers curled around the cool glass, lifting it from the table. His gaze met Daenera’s as he brought the cup to his lips, silently accepting her unspoken challenge–trusting, perhaps foolheartedly, that she had not poisoned it, at least with something deadly. 

After the first gulp of the sweet wine, he almost choked on it–the taste was wrong, strangely salty. Overpoweringly so. Yet, he had already taken the second mouthful before he realized it, and he refused to show any sign of weakness. The wine's sickening saltiness clawed at his tongue and slid down his throat with a nauseating cloying quality. He nearly choked on the vile concoction, but he forced himself to swallow, his resolve unwavering even as the repulsive taste clung to his palate. 

With a sense of grim satisfaction–and nausea–he finished the wine, his mouth prickled with the persistent taste of salt and his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. 

Aemond forced his expression into a mask of composure, suppressing any sign of revolution as he set the empty cup back on the table. His tongue flicked out, sweeping the salty residue from his lips, before his eye found Daenera once more. Her eyes were alight with amusement, her lips curved into an almost mocking smile–wholly self-satisfied with what she had done. 

Without further comment, she turned her attention back to the feast, leaving Aemond with a burning throat and roiling stomach. Amidst the unsettling awareness of how effortlessly she had introduced the salt into his wine–how easily it might have been poison, or perhaps there was poison and the salt merely serving to mask it–Aemond couldn’t shake the strange thrill. While he didn’t truly think she had poisoned him, the possibility added a dangerous edge to their interaction, sparking a peculiar excitement within him at the thought of her sheer audacity. 

Daenera returned to her plate, deftly splitting open a pomegranate and carefully selecting the seeds. As she brought each seed to her lips, savoring the burst of juice with slowness, Aemond felt a shift in the uneasy churn of his stomach. The sight of her delicate fingers and the soft, almost intimate act of tasting the fruit stirred something within him, shifting his discomfort from the wine into a keen sense of longing. 

A warm sensation began to unfurl within him, spreading through his veins like a wildfire and igniting a smolder of desire that he found increasingly difficult to ignore. The deliberate act of her eating, her lips parting for another seed, seemed almost intimate. He couldn’t help but think how sweet those lips looked–red like the fruit itself, as sweet and sinful as temptation incarnate. He wanted nothing more than to taste that sweetness, to claim it for himself, to feel it linger on his tongue like forbidden nectar. 

Her tongue darted out to like the curve of her thumb before slipping it between her lips, sucking away the pomegranate juice that had trickled down. The gesture was simple yet maddening. His stomach fluttered, the heat intensifying, and he swallowed thickly. She continued, seemingly oblivious to the weight of his gaze, to how the sight of her consuming the fruit seeped beneath his skin and made home there, unsettling and irresistible all at once. 

After the sixth seed disappeared between her lips, Aemond forced himself to look away, though it felt like wrenching a blade from the flesh–leaving behind a sharp, lingering sting. Every movement she made seemed to pull at him, his gaze clinging to her like a shadow, reluctant to part from the delicate, sensual way she enjoyed the fruit.

With a slow, deliberate breath, he reached for a nearby cup–not the one from which he had tasted the sickening salt earlier–and poured himself a glass of water. The coolness of the liquid promised a momentary relief, an escape from the taste that still clung stubbornly to his tongue, though he knew it was far more than the salt he sought to wash away. As the water hit his throat, he felt his heartbeat gradually steady, but the heat she had stirred within him still simmered, refusing to be so easily quenched.

The silence that lingered between them, though less hostile than before, still pricked at him with its relentless presence. As the moments passed, it felt as though the chasm between them widened, deepening with the persistent quiet. Yet, the conversation had given him a semblance of hope–even if threads had been weaved into the very fabric of it. He would endure a thousand more salty cups of wine just for her to look at him again. 

Driven by a desperate need to keep the conversation alive and stave off the creeping chill of her disregard, Aemond reached for a topic that might engage her–a rare venture into the nuances of poisons, a subject he seldom favored compared to the directness of steel and combat. How wretchedly pathetic he had become in his yearning for her attention. 

“What of Widow’s Blood?” He asked, recalling the name he had come across once in his studies. 

Daenera’s gaze shifted from the pomegranate to him, her eyes narrowing with guarded wariness as if weighing whether to indulge his curiosity. Aemond felt a familiar flutter in his chest whenever she looked upon him. He felt her gaze prickle over his face, searching his expression–seeking to pry beneath the mask he wore. He tilted his head slightly, meeting her gaze with his own steady scrutiny, his eyes tracing the motion of her thumb as she brought it to her lips to lick away the pomegranate juice. 

“Widow’s Blood,” she began, her voice smooth and measured, “is a thick, cloying substance that resembles blood–hence the name.” She punctuated her explanation by dragging her pointed finger to her lips, savoring the last traces of juice. “It causes the bladder and bowls to cease functioning, leading to death by the body’s own poison. It’s a particularly ugly way to die.”

Her description, delivered with a casualness that belied its morbid content, revealed not only her knowledge of poisons but also a detachment that intrigued and unnerved Aemond in equal measure.

“The Strangler?” 

Daenera’s brow arched slightly, her gaze unwavering as she assessed him. “The Strangler is a rarer poison, appearing as dark purple crystals, similar to black amethysts. It must be dissolved in wine or water to become effective. Once ingested, it closes the throat tighter than a fist,” she explained, pausing to lick her middle finger thoughtfully. “The victim's face turns a deep purple, and their eyes swell with blood as they struggle for air–or so it is said.”

She casually returned to cleansing her thumb, ensuring no trace of pomegranate remained. “Procuring Strangler is slow and costly, but considering the results, it seems a small price to pay for liberation from one's husband.”

The ease with which she spoke of poison and death intrigued Aemond, a flicker of something dark and thrilling igniting within him. Her nonchalant threats seemed to send a strange flutter through his stomach, a reaction he couldn’t quite ignore. The corners of his lips almost widened into a full-blown smile, but he managed to suppress it, maintaining only a wry, amused curl to his lips. 

He watched as she discarded the remnants of the pomegranate onto her plate, reaching instead for her cup. She took a deliberate gulp of water, then placed the cup back down on the table with composed grace. 

“And you can make this poison?”

Daenera’s brows arched slightly, a fleeting hint of a smile tugging at her lips before she quickly masked it. Her expression shifted, the corners of her mouth falling into a more serious line as her brow furrowed. Within the depths of her blue eyes, a spark of something dark and unsettling flickered–something tinged with sadness and deep melancholy. Nevertheless, she answered, “I can.” 

Her tone was measured and even as she continued, “Though the ingredients are rare and difficult to acquire, and the process is both lengthy and costly.” She paused, her gaze becoming steely. “If I were to invest the time and resources, I would acquire Tears of Lys instead. It is more subtle–clear, tasteless, and odorless, leaving no trace to be found. It eats away at the stomach and bowls, and appears to be a disease of the organs once the body is opened up… unfortunately it is not within the realm of my abilities to make–only the alchemists in Lys possess the knowledge to create it.”

Aemond considered the implications of such a rare and potent poison. Its elusive nature and the cost associated with it led him to a grim sort of gratitude. He looked at Daenera, a wry twist to his lips as he said, “I suppose I should count myself fortunate that you cannot make it.”

Daenera’s eyes held a sharp, unyielding glint as she responded coolly. “I had no need for costly poisons to deal with my first husband. I needn’t the Tears of Lys to rid myself of my second.”

Aemond’s gaze remained with Daenera’s as the celebration swirled around them, their intense exchange echoing darkly amidst the jubilant festivities.

Around them, the dance floor had come alive with more guests joining in. Their movements created a lively tapestry of colors and fabrics, twirling and swaying to the cheerful strains of music. The dancers wove around each other, their steps following the music in a vibrant display of joy and celebration.

Ser Tyland Lannister approached the dias, his burgundy doublet contrasting sharply with the heavy golden chain of office that swung from his shoulders. As he bowed respectfully, the chain swayed before him, the head of a lion gleaming in the candlelight. His demeanor was warm but formal as he rose again. “My prince, congratulations on your wedding.”

Ser Tyland continued to speak, attempting to weave a tapestry of congeniality that hung uneasily in the air. “Princess, you look truly radiant–just as your mother did when she graced this hall. My brother was one of your mother’s suitors, to think he could have been your father, and I, your uncle…” Ser Tyland’s voice held a nervous chuckle, his eyes darting as he clumsily shifted his cup between his hands–if he was this anxious he shouldn’t have approached them. “He-he had hoped to unite our houses, and become…” 

Aemond’s gaze narrowed sharply, unamused by the implication.

His voice faltered as he nearly slipped into dangerous territory–almost lending credence to Rhaenyra’s claim by suggesting that his brother would have become King  Consort. He paused, coughing slightly as if to expel the inadvertent implication. 

“Please,” he continued, adopting a more somber tone, “you have my condolences for your recent loss…”

Irritation flickered within his chest as Aemond glared pointedly at the Master of Coin. This was no place or time for condolences. He was about to voice as much when Daenera, her voice soft and controlled, interjected, “Thank you, Ser Tyland. That is very kind of you. However, let us not ruin this joyous occasion with talk of war and loss.”

The smile on Daenera’s face was tight and unconvincing, though it maintained the veneer of courtly grace, her eyes betraying a cold detachment. Aemond’s irritation at this simmered just beneath the surface, twisting within him as he gritted his teeth. He desperately wanted this event to be a joyful celebration for her, to be something she wished for as well–but he knew that wasn't the case. The pretense that it was hung heavily inside him, a weight like lead settling in his stomach.

Ser Tyland, seemingly oblivious to the tension around them, continued with an unwitting bluster. “Ah, of course, Princess,” he said, his tone slightly pompous. “As my brother would have said, had he been here, we shouldn’t burden the delicate sensibilities of the fairer sex with such grim topics. After all, war is a grim affair, best kept away from the gentle hearts of women.” 

“Yes, my lord,” Daenera answered pointedly. “However, the ravages of war do not spare women on the basis of their sex. They are often grieving mothers, the wives of soldiers, and women who must confront those soldiers as their fields are trampled and their homes invaded…” 

Ser Tyland shifted on his feet, his smile faltering as he attempted to ease the palpable tension with a hesitant chuckle. “Indeed, it’s a regrettable aspect of war, and it speaks to your kind heart, Princess, that you show such concern for these matters. But perhaps your energies would be better spent on more suitable pursuits–needlework, or the noble duty of birthing sons. I am sure you will find yourself quite occupied soon enough…”

Tyland fidgeted with his cup, his eyes darting towards Aemond. He seemed to seek approval or reassurance from Aemond, but finding none, his confidence visibly waned. Aemond remained unmoved, his lips curved in the familiar, sharp expression that always seemed to unsettle the Master of Coin.

Daenera’s head tilted as she scrutinized him. “Have you ever seen war?”

Ser Tyland’s smile waned, his brow knitting into a frown as he blinked, shifting his gaze nervously between Aemond and Daenera. His discomfort only seemed to grow as Aemond returned his gaze, staring at him expectantly, relishing in his unease. He leaned back in his seat, finding quiet satisfaction in the unfolding interaction, content to observe how it would play out.

“The reign of our late King Viserys was a peaceful one–”

“And what of any battle experience?” Daenera pressed further, brows lifting in scrutiny. “Have you won any tournaments perhaps? Or dealt with raiders and poachers?”

Tyland shifted uneasily, his expression revealing more than his words might. “We have people who handle such matters…”

The smile Daenera offered was not gentle; it was scythe’s edge, calculated and sharp, ready to cut down the weed that grew before them. She let out a soft, dismissive hum. “Then perhaps you would be more suited to join my needlepoint circle, since it seems our experience in matters of war is quite comparable.” Her head tilted to the side, her gaze fixed intently on him, offering him a leg up after having cut him down. “Or should I be making room for your brother instead, if these opinions are his and not yours?”

Though Aemond considered Tyland Lannister somewhat bearable compared to his arrogant brother–a man inflated with an unwarranted sense of self-importance in his opinion–he still found him a blustering fool. Appointed to the position of Master of Coin largely due to his house’s influence and wealth, he seemed intelligent enough to keep the position on his own. 

At this moment, Tyland displayed a surprising degree of this lesser-seen acumen as he nodded respectfully towards Daenera, a flicker of respect and amusement in his gaze. 

“I fear my brother would fail with the needle,” Tyland remarked with a wry smile. And given the match to Golden Tooth, he is like to see battle soon enough.”

Daenera’s smile was gentle, yet beneath its softness lay a steel edge. “Nevertheless, I shall reserve a seat for either of you in my circle.”

Aemond’s gaze tracked Tyland Lannister as he nodded with a begrudging air of deference, the faintest hint of amusement playing at the corners of his mouth in response to Daenera’s barbed remark. With a final, somewhat resigned glance at the newlyweds, the Master of Coin retreated from the table and made his way down from the dais.

Just as Tyland’s foot touched the ground, a loud clank pierced through the throng of celebration. The sudden noise cut through the crowd, halting the dancers in their steps. Women’s skirts, which had been in motion, fluttered momentarily before coming to a rest, and the lively music tapered off into silence, drawing the attention of all present towards the source of the disturbance. 

Aegon, rising from his seat with his wine goblet in hand, discarded the fork he had been using to rhythmically beat against the metal cup on the table. With an air of grandeur befitting the occasion, he turned to address the court. 

“My lords and ladies,” he proclaimed, his voice echoing through the now-quiet hall, “let us raise our cups in honor of the newlyweds–my brother Aemond and my cherished niece, now his wife, Daenera!”

The court obediently rose to their feet, their cups lifted in a collective gesture of salute. The air was briefly filled with the scraping of chairs and the murmur of movement as the nobles shifted positions.

A broad grin stretched across Aegon’s face, his expression radiating a dark delight. With an exaggerated flourish, he continued, “The two of them are upholding the grand traditions of our house–nieces marrying uncles…” His eyes sparkled with a familiar, mischievous amusement that Aemond had learned to dread. “How strange to think that if Mother had accepted my dear half-sister’s offer years ago, the bride would have been by my side today–”

He pushed his chair back with a bit too much force, stumbling slightly as his foot caught on an unseen obstruction. Regaining his balance with a swift adjustment, he moved around the King’s table, narrowing avoiding their mother’s outstretched hand as she tried to halt his antics. Ignoring her silent plea for decorum, Aegon continued, his voice rising over the room’s growing tension. “Daenera would have worn a queen's crown, and perhaps we might have avoided the ravages of war. But alas, she graces my brother's side as his wife…”

As Aegon ascended the dias with bounding steps with an almost reckless exuberance, Aemond’s hand tightened into a fist as it rested atop the table, his solitary eye burning with a sharp intensity that tracked his brother’s every move. Though irritation seethed within him like a fire, he maintained his composure, his expression carved into an impenetrable mask, only his gaze betraying his anger. 

His brother’s voice dripped with a saccharine veneer of politeness as he spoke, the corners of his lips curling into a mocking smile. He leaned forward slightly, his gaze fixed on Aemond with a glint of malice in his eyes. “I wish them both the utmost happiness in this war–marriage,” he corrected with a deliberate pause, the misstep in his words presented as if it were a mere trifling matter. The truth of his sincerity was as thin as a razor’s edge, his words balancing precariously between genuine and feigned–falling to neither side.

“It’s not often one witnesses a love so resilient that it endures the death of a brother,” Aegon continued, his voice laced with mocking reverence. “Truly, it is moving. A love so rare and profound that it deserves its own place in the annals of history, wouldn’t you agree?”  His eyes narrowed with a glimmer of cruel satisfaction, the biting commentary wrapped in a guise of false admiration, as if he were bestowing a grand compliment rather than delivering a stinging rebuke.

Aegon held himself as though on a stage, seemingly reveling in being the center of the court's attention. He performed for the guests with a theatrical flair, drawing out each word for dramatic effect. The court, however, appeared unsure–divided with some courtiers watching with veiled amusement, their lips curling into knowing smirks, while others exchanged uneasy glances, their discomfort evident as the King mocked and belittled his own brother. The air thickened with a tangible tension, unsure whether to cheer on Aegon’s audacious display or remain quiet.

Aegon’s voice carried an almost mocking cheerfulness as he continued, “Daenera Velaryon–though perhaps I should say Baratheon? No, that doesn’t quite suit her,” His voice rose, dismissive of their mother’s low warning to temper his speech. “Daenera Strong might be a better choice,” he paused, seemingly savoring the way the name sounded, his eyes moving past Aemond to Daenera, his head tilting slightly. “Yet even that name seems inadequate now that you have, at last, become a true Targaryen.”

Aemond tore his gaze away from his brother, momentarily focusing on the green velvet of the table in front of him. As he shifted his attention to the side, he noted the stillness on Daenera’s face. She resembled a porcelain doll, her expression eerily serene, but her eyes were a different story–they smoldered with a fierce intensity, set firmly on Aegon as though they could incinerate him with their gaze alone.

His hand clenched tighter into a white-knuckled fist, his bones protesting under the pressure. The skin stretched tight across his knuckles, and he could feel the intense heat of his fury searing through his chest. The impulse to seize his brother by the collar, drag him through the throne room, and hurl him into the dirt outside was a sharp, almost tangible sensation at his fingertips. He bit down hard on his tongue, the bitter taste of suppressed anger filling his mouth as he fought to keep the scathing words trapped behind his teeth. He remained mute, enduring the sting of his brother’s derision with a tense, painful silence. 

Across the table, Aegon leaned in with a smirk, his hand planted on its surface. “The only thing you’re missing to become a true Targaryen,” he taunted, his gaze filled with a condescending satisfaction, “is a dragon to ride. But then again, it seems you’ve already claimed my brother for that role, haven’t you?”

A ripple of polite and uneasy laughter swept through the crowd, the tension growing, becoming thick and suffocating. Aemond’s gaze swept across the assembly, sharp and penetrating, locking eyes with those who dared meet his stare. He could feel the weight of their judgment pressing against his skin, a prickling sensation that made his blood simmer beneath the surface. Their expressions betrayed what words would not–disdain, pity, and a loathing barely masked by the forced decorum of the occasion.

He knew, without a doubt, that there was no love for him here. Not truly. Not now. Not with the blood that stained his hands. Not with the title of ‘Kinslayer’ following his name like a curse, turning even the faintest flickers of respect into something twisted and bitter. What they felt for him was not respect, but fear and disgust. He saw it clearly in their eyes, the way they recoiled slightly when his gaze met theirs, the scorn etched into their faces despite their attempts to hide it. The whispers, the glances–everything confirmed what he already knew: he was an outsider in his own home, a monster in their midst.

Yet, amidst the disdain, Aemond detected a flicker of pity in their eyes–not for him, but for Daenera, who endured the same public humiliation. Aemond dismissed their scorn with cold indifference, but the sharp sting of humiliation was harder to ignore. It burrowed beneath his skin, a familiar ache that gnawed at his composure. The sensation itched along his nerves, a persistent irritation that threatened to unravel the fragile threads of his restraint, pushing his patience to its limit.

“Moonflower,” Daenera murmured, her voice so soft it barely reached Aemond’s ears. Yet, in that single whispered word, he found an unexpected comfort, a dark solace that cut through the tension–even as it carried a threat towards his own brother. 

“Widow’s Blood,” Aemond replied, his tone equally hushed, matching her grim indulgence in this shared fantasy. The words hung between them, tying them together in animosity. In his mind, he could almost see it–Aegon’s body swelling grotesquely, the poison turning his own flesh against him, letting his bowels fill with shit until they ruptured, his blood slowly turning black as his insides festered. The thought brought a twisted satisfaction, a brief respite from the humiliation his brother aimed at him.

“Quite a climb, wouldn’t you say?” Aegon tilted his head slightly, his eyes meeting Daenera’s with a malevolent gleam. “From Strong to Targaryen–just a small leap across a sea of blood. Ah, the things we do for love…”

He straightened to his full height, a mischievous grin spreading wider as he lifted a finger to scratch thoughtfully at the corner of his mouth, as if debating whether to push his jest further. The gleam in his eyes suggested he had already decided. 

“This isn’t the princess’s first marriage, as most of you are well aware,” he continued. “You were all here for her first wedding, after all. Let’s hope this one lasts longer.”

As Aegon moved around the table, Aemond leaned back in his seat, his gaze never wavering from his brother’s every step. His jaw clenched so tightly he feared his teeth might shatter under the pressure. When his brother reached him, he patted him on the shoulder in mockery of brotherly affection, humming softly. “I hope you won’t be disappointed with your wedding night, brother…Though, you shouldn’t be too disappointed about not claiming her maidenhead this evening–you only have yourself to blame for that. And her late husband, well, he didn't seem to mind just how well she has taken to dragon-riding.” He offered a half-hearted shrug, his face twisting in a grimace of amusement. “As the Lord Hand mentioned, the two of them grew rather close after her return to King’s Landing… And following the unfortunate passing of her husband, he became a great comfort to her. He often took her riding on his dragon, and she took to it like a true Targaryen–just like her mother before her!”

The insinuation hung heavy in the air between them, thick and suffocating like the charged silence before a thunderstorm. Aemond’s glare sharpened as he looked up at his brother, his thumb idly grazing the band on his ring, fingers tracing the hidden lever that concealed the needle within–prickly but not poisoned. The tension between them crackled, a silent threat simmering just beneath the surface. 

Aegon never knew when to stop. 

As the Lord Hand rose from his seat, the scraping of the chair legs against the floor seemed to thunder through the room, the sound echoing off the stone walls. He strode toward Aegon and the bridal table, his face marked by a deep furrow–a clear expression of exasperation mixed with his growing caution. Each deliberate step he took seemed to carry the weight of his reproach.

“One might’ve mistake her for the Maiden herself on her first wedding day, but looks can be deceiving, and my brother finds himself at a disadvantage…” He leaned in closer, his breath carrying the cloying scent of wine as he murmured, “Perhaps there are other ways for your bride to bleed for you, brother. Other places your cock has not yet breached.” 

Aemond’s jaw tightened, his teeth grinding together as agitation simmered just beneath his skin. He uncurled his fist, irritably tapping two fingers against the table in a vain attempt to restrain the impulse to throttle his own brother.

Meanwhile, Otto Hightower ascended the dias with a grave purpose, a weary and exasperated expression on his face. It was clear  he intended to prevent one grandson from ending his reign prematurely and the other from becoming a kinslayer twice over. His hand settled firmly on Aegon’s shoulders, steering him away from the seething Aemond–just far enough that their exchange was out of earshot. 

Aemond heard his brother inhale deeply, the sound heavy with annoyed resignation, before he reluctantly returned to the front of the dias. Otto descended the steps and quietly returned to the King’s table, his presence a cautioning influence that sought to avoid further conflict. 

Now back in his place, Aegon pulled a face at the crowd, lifting his goblet of wine high to brush off the tension with a forced display of merriment. “My lords and ladies, let us raise our cups to the newlyweds and wish them a long and joyful life together! May their love flourish in the light and may they fulfill their heart’s every desire!” He raised the cup higher still, declaring, “To the bride and groom!”

“To the bride and groom!” Echoed the court, as everyone raised their cups in unison before indulging in a hearty drink–a gesture that Aemond found bitterly fitting after such a speech. He poured himself a cup of wine, seeking to soothe the seething anger and humiliation that churned within him. Beside him, Daenera did the same, albeit with a cup of water. 

Just as Aemond hoped the spectacle might be drawing to a close, Aegon slammed his now-empty cup onto the table with a definitive thud, a wide, mischievous grin spreading across his face as he declared for all to hear, “Let the presentation of gifts commence!” 

As the crowd stirred with anticipation, Aegon leaned over the table again, a wide grin spreading across his face as he murmured in a tone brimming with mischief, “You are going to love this, brother.”

Aemond felt no comfort at his brother’s words; instead, a heavy sense of apprehension settled in his gut. He knew all too well the nature of Aegon’s so-called gifts, having been the recipient of a venture to a brothel for his thirteenth name day, as well as a few unsavory gifts he had no taste for. The memories did nothing to ease his growing unease. 

His suspicions were quickly confirmed when servants entered, carrying a large, ornate book. It was wider than most, its cover crafted from creamy silk, embossed with gold, and adorned with rich blue and purple paints. The book was carefully placed before Aemond and Daenera, with the servants swiftly removing the plates of food to make room for it. 

As the book was turned towards them, its golden clasps–set with pearls and sapphires–were unfastened, and the cover was gently opened to reveal the first page. The page was decorated with a gilded frame and intricately painted leaves and vines curling around the frame, the text within written in common tongue; A Flowers Bloom.

Aegon leaned casually on the table, his amusement evident in the gleam of his eyes as he watched them closely. “This one, brother, I think you’ll find quite enjoyable–”

With practiced ease, Aegon flipped through the pages of the book, as if intimately familiar with its contents–an assumption Aemond had no trouble believing. The page settled on a particularly lewd illustration: a man, his face buried in the bosom of a woman, suckling at her teat, while her hand gripped his erect cock. His legs were spread wide, revealing an object inserted into another orifice. The image was as explicit as it was vulgar, a grotesque display meant to provoke. 

“Given the stick so firmly lodged in your…” Aegon finished, letting his voice trail off as Aemond glared at him with such intensity that it seemed to stifle what words remained. His jaw tightened as he stared angrily at his brother, the weight of humiliation once again bearing down on him, but he refused to give Aegon any other reaction. 

Aegon merely half-shrugged, his smirk never faltering as he continued, “Though, my favorite is this one.” He gave them no time to dwell on the previous obscene illustration before casually flipping to another page. “A bit of stretching might serve you well before attempting this one–it's demanding on the thighs…”

The illustration Aegon revealed next was more shocking still. It depicted a woman completely upside down, her weight resting on her neck and shoulders, arms bracing as she held her lower half vertically in the air. Her ankles were positioned by her ears, her toes making a precarious effort to prevent her from tipping over. Directly above her, a man loomed, his knees slightly bent as he engaged with her from above, his gaze intent and downward.

Aemond’s gaze narrowed as he took in the image, the absurdity of the position only deepening his disdain. Outrage and humiliation surged through him, burning up his throat like a wildfire rapidly spreading. The intense emotions threatened to overwhelm him as he struggled to maintain his composure in the face of such blatant provocation.

As Aegon circled the table, he came to a stop beside Daenera, one hand resting casually on the back of her chair while the other pressed firmly against the table’s edge. Leaning down toward her, his posture exuding a predatory ease, His gaze, however, traveled beyond her, locking with Aemond's, a knowing smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. His voice dropped to a low murmur, just loud enough for her–and Aemond–to hear, the intimacy of the gesture adding a layer of provocation that bristled in the air. “You know, brother, I can’t help but wonder… With all these positions, I do hope you’re up to the challenge. A woman like our sweet niece–well, she’ll need more than just your brooding one-eyed stares to be satisfied.”

He let his gaze drift over Daenera, who shifted uncomfortably away from him, then back to Aemond, amusement flickering in his eyes as he continued, “Of course, if you find any of it too… uncomfortable or lacking in taste, I’d be more than happy to step in and show her the finer points. I’ve got plenty of experience in these matters, after all.” Aegon’s smirk widened as he casually flipped through the book, landing on another obscene image. “Our poor niece has already endured one unsatisfying marriage, brother. It would truly be a tragedy for her to suffer through another.” His voice remained low and steady, his eyes never wavering from Aemond’s. “We both know she deserves more than to be left wanting–”

Aemond’s fist slammed onto the table with such force the cutlery rattled, the sharp clatter echoing throughout the hall. The lingering tremor seemed to heighten the tension as he rose from his seat, venomous words already forming on his tongue, fueled by the blaze of rage searing through his chest. His knuckles flushed red and bore the fresh sting of skin split open from the blow. He flexed his hand, ignoring the throbbing pain that now pulsed in time with his heartbeat. 

Without a second thought, he seized his goblet, the grip so tight it was a wonder the cup didn’t crack under the strain. His gaze, cold and unyielding, turned upon his brother. The smug smile that had danced on Aegon’s lips wavered at last, though his posture remained almost mocking, one hand still resting lazily on Daenera’s chair while the other hovered near the table. 

“A toast,” Aemond announced, his voice as sharp as steel drawn from its sheath, slicing through the air with brutal clarity. The soft hum of conversation and the delicate strains of music faltered into silence, all eyes turning towards the bridal table. “To my brother, the King.”

The silence that followed was thick with unspoken tension, the weight of his words hanging ominously between them. Even the musicians, hesitant to resume, left their instruments in uneasy pause as the scene played out.

Aemond turned slowly towards his brother, his single eye gleaming with a dangerous light. “Though you bear the name of the Conqueror himself and wear his crown,” he began, his tone deceptively calm, each word veiled with simmering contempt, “you remain ever our father’s son.”

He let the sentence linger in the air for a moment, a soft hum escaping his lips as his head tilted slightly. 

“Our father,” Aemond continued, taking on a faint edge of mockery, “ruled with a gentle hand, beloved by the realm for his kindness and patience. His was a reign of peace.” The faintest smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth, his expression coldly calculated–mocking. “He knew his limitations well and deferred to the judgment of his council…”Viserys had been weak and pliable, a puppet in the hands of anyone seeking to pluck his strings–and Aegon stood to be no different, Aemond thought. “It was through his… amiable nature that he upheld his peaceful reign.”

The hall seemed to hold its breath, every ear straining to catch the edges of his words, the tension rippling through the guests like a silent current. Aemond’s gaze hardened as he contemplated the consequences of their father’s indecision–his weakness. If he had not been so hesitant to displace Rhaenyra once he had finally secured the son he desired, perhaps the realm would not have to descend into the chaos and war that it now teetered on.

“But the times have changed,” Aemond declared, his lips pursing into a smug expression. “War descends upon us, as our half-sister seeks to claim your throne, and war demands more than mere amiability.”

He emitted a low, contemplative hum, the sound tinged with anticipation as he savored the words he left unspoken. They lingered in the air between them, silent but present; It requires strength, brother, and I am that strength. 

“While you sit the throne as our father once did,” Aemond continued, each word carefully chosen. “With Vhagar, the largest and fiercest dragon in the world, I will secure our victory and ensure your rule remains unchallenged…” 

Aemond subtly flicked his finger across the hidden lever in the band of his ring, engaging the concealed needle as he circled around his wife's chair toward his brother. Aegon's eyes narrowed, watching his approach with growing suspicion. With a feigned casualness, Aemond bumped against Aegon's arm in a gesture of brotherly warmth, then clapped his hand firmly on his brother's arm, ensuring the needle made its mark. 

“So, let us drink to your rule,” Aemond said, raising his cup higher with his other hand, giving his brother’s arm a squeeze, “and may you reign as our father did–while I see to it that our enemies are crushed and your throne remains intact.” 

He turned his gaze to the crowd, his voice ringing clear, “To Aegon the Magnanimous!” 

“To the King!” The crowd responded, their voices merging into a chorus that filled the hall. They lifted their cups high, the light glinting off the raised goblets before they drank deeply. Yet, despite the enthusiasm of the moment, the cheering carried a tense, uneasy undertone. Many in the crowd exchanged uneasy glances, their laughter forced, betraying their uncertainty about the implications of the toast. 

Aemond’s lips remained in a sharp smirk as he watched his brother’s gaze narrow slightly. He then plastered a strained smile across his face, nodding to the crowd as they cheered for him. Through gritted teeth and a forced grin, he muttered, “Well done, you little twat.”

As the servants removed the obscene book from the table, making space for any future gifts, Aegon turned back to his brother, his expression shifting into something resembling a begrudging amusement. The familiar upside-down smile appeared on his face, head tilting slightly–a sign that he was impressed, albeit unwillingly.  

Without warning, Aegon’s hand shot out to grip Aemond’s shoulder, both brother’s locking eyes as they held onto one another, a brief and tense connection. “Come now, brother, lighten up. It was only a jest…”

He gave a half-shrug under Aemond’s steady hole, his head tilting further as his gaze flickered briefly to Daenera, a sly glint in his eye as he seemingly couldn’t help himself, adding, “Unless, of course, she takes me up on the offer.”

Daenera rolled her eyes, the faintest flush coloring her cheeks from the ordeal unfolding around her. She remained silent, her expression a blend of quiet exasperation and discomfort, letting the brothers’ exchange continue without interruption as she dismissed them by turning back to the feast.

Music had begun to play again, the murmur of voices rising as people returned to their conversations. The dancers began again, the steps adding a low shuffle to the air as they followed the tune of the music. 

The sting of humiliations still burned in his chest, a familiar ache that carved itself into him over the years. Aemond’s expression remained stony, his eye cold and sharp. “There's a fine line between teasing and mockery, one you cross all too often–”

Aegon waved off Aemond’s retort with an exaggerated flick of his hand, dismissing his brother’s irritation. “Oh, please,” he scoffed, brushing Aemond’s hand from his shoulder with casual indifference, his fingers gingerly touching upon the spot on his arm where the needle had pricked him, his brows knitting further together as he continued, “You’ve always been so easily offended–one would think you’d learn to grow thicker skin over the years.” His tone took on a mocking lightness, as if Aemond’s frustration was something trivial to be laughed away. 

“Be happy, brother,” Aegon continued, gesturing towards Daenera, who seemed to catch the movement out of the corner of her eye as a scowl grew on her face. “You’ve got a beautiful and loyal wife at your side–one you choose for yourself, mind you. That’s more than some of us ever got. And,” he added with grimace, “yours has all her senses. I think it’s time you loosen up a little.”

He gave Aemond another playful shake, a gesture that only deepened the simmering tension between them. Aegon’s words, meant to placate, only served to underscore the insult buried beneath his brotherly act, the mocking jabs hidden in plain sight. Aemond stood rigid, his composure fraying, but held in place by years of restraint and the weight of duty.

Aemond sharply brushed Aegon’s hand away, his glare cutting through his brother’s amused smile. “You should be more careful with your words, brother,” he said, his voice low and cold. “Vhagar is the greatest asset we have in this war. Without me–and my dragon–Rhaenyra would already be sitting on your throne. I think that alone should earn me your respect–”

Aegon’s smile faded slightly, his brows rising in sharp retort. “If it weren’t for you, there might not have been a war.” 

“You know as well as I do that war was inevitable,” Aemond replied, his tone hardening. “You should be grateful I brought you back. Without me, you’d either be rotting in a gutter outside some brothel or with your head mounted on a spike outside Dragonstone. You’re king now, Aegon, by sheer luck of being born first–try and make yourself worthy of it.”

Aegon’s expression shifted, his earlier amusement draining away as a nerve was struck. “I am trying. And I will not be weak like our father.”

The crack in his confidence was clear, and Aemond knew he had hit a sore spot.

“Good,” Aemond answered coolly, “because he would have lost this war.” His words hung in the air as he looked at Aegon with a mixture of challenge and cold expectation. 

Aegon grimaced with a half-shrug, turning on his heels. With a mischievous grin, he snatched a grape from a nearby plate and propped it into his mouth with exaggerated delight as he gave Daenera a teasing glance, quickly winking at her. He stepped down from the dias and was welcomed into the midst of revelry by his friends. Aemond watched him for a moment, his annoyance simmering just beneath the surface. 

Daenera caught his eye briefly, her expression meticulously neutral but her eyes sharp with unspoken words. Her gaze flicked away swiftly, refocusing on the reviving festivities as the tension in the air slowly began to dissipate. 

Returning to his seat, Aemond murmured under his breath, “Hemlock.”

The silence stretched between them for a long moment before she responded, “Slowed manticore venom.”

“What does that do?”

“It kills you slowly.”

Aemond sank into his seat with a weary sigh, his gaze flickering toward his mother as she approached, her lady-in-waiting, Talya, trailing closely behind. He rested his hand on the table, fingers drumming lightly against the surface as he leaned back. Though outwardly composed, the simmering irritation still lingered beneath his skin, slow to fade. His jaw remained tense, and his eyes, though calm, held a flicker of the frustration that had not yet fully dissipated.

Ascending the steps to the dias with her hands clasped together in front of her, Alicent came to stand before the table. Behind her, Lady Talya carefully placed three ornate totems on the table before them, each one thicker than the others. One of the books had a leather cover, with the seven-pointed star delicately embossed in gold leaf, gleaming under the dim light. The other two were bound in rich green cloth, their covers adorned with pearls carefully stitched into the fabric, adding a touch of elegance to the simple design. 

“It is my hope,” Alicent began, her voice soft but firm, as she unclasped her hands to rest one gently atop the stack of books before her, “that the two of you will find guidance in these.” Her eyes shifted between them, the weight of her words carrying a deeper meaning. “They were given to me on the occasion of my own wedding and helped me find my place in the new role as a wife. It is my prayer that they will guide you as well–and offer a path of atonement for the sins we each carry.”

“Thank you, mother,” Aemond said, his tone polite but distant, his eye briefly flickering over the books before shifting away. He had little interest in whatever atonement they promised–neither the books nor the gods could grant him the absolution he sought. It was a different kind of atonement that weighed on his soul, one far beyond what the seven-pointed star and its gods could offer. 

Alicent regarded Daenera with dark, scrutinizing eyes, her expression carefully measured as she seemed to note something amiss. “Your necklace…” she remarked, her tone laced with a subtle undertone, as though the absence of jewelry meant more than it seemed. 

Shifting his gaze to Daenera, Aemond caught the slight flicker in her demeanor as her hand rose instinctively to her chest. Her fingers brushed the exposed skin just below her collarboes, as if searching for the absent necklace. Her smile, though poised, was stiff and brittle, like a finely honed blade.

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” she responded lightly, her voice carrying an edge of feigned innocence. “I must have lost it–what a shame…”

The statement hung in the air for a moment, and Aemond could feel the tension simmering just beneath the surface. His mother’s eyes narrowed slightly, suspicion brewing between them, but she said nothing further. Instead, she smoothed her hands over her skirts with practiced grace, the movement calm yet telling of her thoughts left unspoken. 

His mother turned and descended from the dias. 

Daenera smiled faintly, her face betraying none of the disdain he knew she held for the seven-pointed star. As his mother retreated and the books were whisked away, Daenera spoke lowly, an edge to her voice, “If those books cross the threshold of our chambers, I will shave off your hair while you sleep. You will be the bald, one-eyed kinslayer.”

Aemond’s lips twisted into a brief, amused smirk at her remark. He had no reason to doubt her threat. The memory of her petty nature was still fresh–he recalled the time she had slipped dye into his bath oils after a long day of training. He had sat in the bath, unaware, until the bottom of his hair had turned an unfortunate shade, costing him a few precious inches. Thankfully, he hadn’t sunk fully beneath the water, sparing the rest of his hair, though the stray hairs on his body had turned a vivid pink. He had swiftly dealt with the issue, removing any trace to avoid the embarrassment of discovery.

Aemond also knew Daenera was entirely capable of making good on her current threat–cutting his hair as he slept. With that in mind, he subtly waved over a servant, leaning in to quietly instruct them. “See that the books are brought to my chambers.” 

The Hand of the King, Otto Hightower, was next to present his gifts. For Aemond, a warhorse–a black stallion bred and trained specifically for battle–was promised, currently on the way from Oldtown. It was said that it was a magnificent beast, fit for a prince. Daenera, on the other hand, received two large chests filled with brocade and rich fabrics, most in shades of green. 

Both gifts were accepted courteously, though Aemond thought he had little need for another horse. He only needed the one to get to Vhagar. The stallion was impressive, but when it came to war, he had Vhagar–no other mount could compare to a dragon. 

Next, Ser Tyland Lannister stepped forward, offering an ornate golden dagger set with gleaming emeralds for Aemond, as well as a chest brimming with gold bars from House Lannisters vast coffers. Daenera was given an array of fine jewelry and precious gems, each piece more extravagant than the last. Lord Jasper Wylde followed, offering them more fabrics–rich and finely woven–while Lord Larys Strong presented a book chronicling the history and legends of Harrenhal, paired with a tapestry depicting a serene forest teeming with woodland creatures. 

Aemond watched silently as his sister approached with her children. Jaehaera was perched on her hip, while Jaehaerys clutched her hand, his small legs working hard to keep up. They ascended the dias together, a nursemaid following close behind, carefully placing a neatly tied bundle of fabric on the table. Helaena’s smile was soft and gentle as she spoke, her gaze meeting Daenera’s “To bring you comfort… it is a blanket.” 

Jaehaera, with her wide, beaming smile, caught sight of Daenera and waved excitedly with childish pride, declaring, “I had three lemoncakes!”

“Three!” Daenera chuckled, leaning in slightly as her tone brightened. “That is a lot of lemoncakes.”

“I would have had more if I had been allowed,” Jaehaera pouted, burying her face against her mother’s neck, her earlier excitement fading into disappointment. 

Helaena gently chided her daughter, a soft smile playing on her lips. “Had you been allowed more, you would have gotten sick, sweet one.”

“No, I wouldn’t!” Jaehaera shot back, her small face scrunched into a determined scowl, pulling away from her mother to make her protest. “I wouldn’t!”

Aemond felt a feeling of softness pass over him as he watched his niece and nephew interact with his wife, though his face remained impassive. The warmth of moments like this was a rarity to him, and he struggled to engage, even as the lightheartedness of the exchange echoed faintly within him–he didn’t want to spoil it and instead sat back. 

“Aunty Dae!” Jaehaerys interjected, his small fingers gripping the edge of the table as he stood on his tiptoes, attempting to peer over the tall surface–his nose just about reached over the edge, eyes blinking at them from across the table. “I have a gift for you too!”

His balance wavered, a slight frown crossing his face as he teetered. Without warning, he bent his knees and peeked under the curtain of the tablecloth, his expression suddenly mischievous–the same gleam in his eyes as his father often got. Much to the nursemaid’s dismay, she called out sharply, trying to draw him back as he disappeared beneath the table, crawling along the floor of the dias. 

A dull thud followed from under the table, accompanied by a displeased, “Ow!”

The tablecloth shifted again as Jaehaerys reemerged on the other side, now beside Daenera. Quickly standing, he brushed his long hair out of his flushed face, doing his best to regain his composure despite the obvious embarrassment painting his cheeks. 

Daenera laughed, her laughter soft and genuine, the sound lifting the atmosphere around her. It slipped beneath Aemond’s skin, twisting around his heart and making it ache in a way he hadn’t expected. It had been so long since he had heard her laugh like that, and he found himself watching her quietly, captivated by the rare moment of joy.

Daenera twisted in her seat, her gaze warm as she reached out, brushing her hand gently over Jaehaerys’ head. “Are you hurt?”

“No…” Jaehaerys replied, standing up straighter, his small chest puffed out with determination as he held up the gift in his hand. “Here.” His face scrunched into a slight frown as he hesitated, the earlier embarrassment still burning brightly on his cheeks. “I… it’s–did you really claim a dragon?”

Daenera blinked in confusion, head tilting. “No?”

Jaehaerys’s frown deepened, his brow furrowing as he looked between her and his mother. “But father said you had… he said you had claimed one to ride!”

“Oh… I…” Daenera stammered, her eyes widening slightly as a laugh bubbled up, soft and warm. She shook her head in disbelief, amusement dancing across her features, even as she attempted to compose herself for the boy whose frown only grew. “No, Jaehaerys. I have not claimed a dragon. Your father meant that your uncle has taken me flying on Vhagar.”

“Oh,” Jaehaerys murmured, a hint of disappointment creeping into his voice. He furrowed his brow, clearly unsatisfied with Daenera’s answer. “Will you claim one?”

Before Daenera could respond, Helaena gently interjected, her soft voice carrying a quiet authority as she called her son back to her side. “Jaehaerys,” she said, her tone calm but firm, reminding him to mind his manners.

The boy hesitated for a moment, his curiosity still evident in his eyes, remaining at her side.

“Maybe one day,” Daenera answered. She accepted the small wooden dragon, her delicate fingers tracing the grooves carved into its surface. A soft smile played on her lips as she carefully placed it on the table before her. The toy, worn with age and clearly cherished, had once been one of Jaehaerys’ prized possessions, something he had clung to when he was younger. Now, it seemed, he was ready to part with it–though he undoubtedly had many others to take its place. 

“Jaehaerys, it is time for bed. Come,” Helaena called softly from the other side of the table, her voice gentle but firm. Jaehaera rested sleepily against her mother’s collarbone, her small hand inching towards her mouth until her thumb found its way between her lips. She began to suck on it absentmindedly, her eyelids drooping.

Jaehaerys, full of energy despite the late hour, held up his hand expectantly towards Daenera. When she placed hers in his small grasp, he brought it gallantly to his lips, pressing a knightly kiss to her knuckles with all the seriousness of a boy his age could muster. Then, with a dramatic flourish, he stepped back and gave her a deep bow, mimicking the courtly gestures he had seen countless times. 

Before anyone could stop him, he glanced towards the table again, clearly intent on repeating his earlier adventure by crawling beneath it. Both Helaena and Daenera quickly chided him, their soft voices stopping him in his tracks. 

Reluctantly, the boy abandoned his plan and instead walked around the table as instructed, his head held high. 

When he reached the other side, Helaena took his hand and led him down the steps, her movements calm and measured as they made their way towards the quieter edges of the hall, where the revelry was less overwhelming. 

Aemond’s gaze drifted across the grand hall, taking in the whirl of festivities around him. The room was alive with motion and color–nobles and courtiers mingled, their laughter blending with the clingking of goblets and the soft rustle of silk gowns. The lively tunes of minstrels filled the air as more gifts were presented–small chests brimming with silver, gold, glittering jewels, and delicate ornaments. Some contained sheer fabrics from distant lands, their origins puzzling giving the ongoing blockade. He couldn’t help but wonder how such rare items had slipped through. Each offering was either sent to the vault for safekeeping or delivered to their chambers. 

His gaze eventually settled on Aegon, who stood leaning against a table, a goblet lazily balanced in his hand. Surrounding him were his usual friends, the ever-present lickspittles who laughed heartily at his every jest–though their attention seemed more focused on Ser Martyn Reyne at the moment, who had seemingly become the latest target of their mockery. Eddard Waters, the bastard, had his arm draped casually around Ser Martyn’s neck, whispering something that looked like advice, judging by the exaggerated gestures. Aegon’s eyes flicked briefly towards Aemond and Daenera, where there was a moment of unspoken mischief between him and his group. 

A rose was shoved into Ser Martyn’s hands, and with a rough push from his companions, he stumbled forward, clearly meant to approach the dias. Aemond’s eye narrowed slightly as he watched the awkward display unfold, but before Ser Martyn could reach them, another knight stepped forward, cutting off his advance. 

Tension simmered beneath Aemond’s skin as he observed the antics unfolding across the hall, a suspicion growing that it was yet another deliberate attempt to provoke him–if not outright mock him. Though he had long grown accustomed to being the target of Aegon's jests, the old irritation still sparked within him, tightening his chest with the familiar pang of annoyance.

His attention was soon drawn to Ser Gwayne Hightower as the knight approached with a casual grace, a subtle smile tugging at his uncle’s thin lips. His pale blue eyes flicked from Daenera to Aemond, a glint of amusement dancing in them. He stopped before them, offering a courteous nod. 

“Congratulations, nephew,” he said, his tone smooth and measured. His gaze then shifted to Daenera. “Princess…” 

“Ser Gwayne,” Daenera greeted politely, her tone measured but pleasant. 

“You make a beautiful bride,” Gwayne continued, his voice soft and almost too smooth, the curve of his lips teetering on the edge of a smirk–one that only seemed to sharpen the gleam in his eyes. Aemond always thought there was something fox-like about his uncle, sly and clever, never fully revealing his intentions. 

“And as such,” he went on, producing a golden flower from behind his back, “I thought you deserved something just as remarkable in beauty–a flower for a flower.”

He extended the shimmering blossom towards Daenera with a flourish, his words drenched in flattery as his gaze lingered on her, perhaps longer than Aemond would have liked. Daenera reached across the table, the beads of her long sleeve scratching against the table’s edge as she took the delicate gift with a soft smile. Her eyes lingered appreciatively on the finely crafted petals, her fingers delicately tracing their intricate edges–each petal shimmered as though touched by the sun itself.

Something bitter twisted in Aemond’s gut, a surge of possessiveness and irritation rising within him. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to remain impassive, though every instinct urged him to show his displeasure.

“And I thought you might be tired of receiving roses,” Gwayne said with a soft smile on his lips. “You deserve something more enduring, something that will not wither in time.”

Behind Gwayne, unbeknownst to him, Ser Martyn reyne floundered awkwardly, clutching a simple rose in his grasp–a flower stolen from one of the many arrangements scattered throughout the hall. His gaze dropped to the common flower and without a word, shuffled back from the dias, his intentions seemingly crumbling under the weight of Gwayne’s more lavish offering. His retreat was met with loud jeering from Aegon’s circle, but Martyn took it in stride, smiling sheepishly as he rejoined the group. 

Aemond felt a brief flicker of amusement at the scene, watching Ser Martyn’s failed attempt. Yet that amusement quickly faded, withering away as Gwayne placed two books upon the table, his hand resting atop the leather bound parchment.

“How fares my brother?” Aemond inquired, diverting Gwayne’s attention from Daenera with a deliberately casual demeanor. His smile was restrained as he leaned forward slightly, interest flickering in his gaze–even as Daenera’s eyes remained on the book before her.

“He is thriving,” Gwayne responded, his tone softening and carrying a hint of pride. “He’s becoming quite the swordsman, as his older brother is.” His eyes gleamed with amusement as he continued, “And he’s equally dedicated to his studies and music–he plays well, better than I ever could. Though, as he’s grown older, he has begun to draw quite a bit of attention from the ladies. I suspect he’ll leave quite a few hearts in disarray when he marries the Baratheon girl.”

Aemond nodded as he considered his younger brother, whom he hadn’t seen since childhood. He had been ten and his brother just six when he had been sent to Oldtown, and the distance had only grown with the years. He had missed him deeply, the only brother with whom he shared any sense of kinship, the one he had wanted to be a better brother for–to protect him as his own older brother hadn’t. 

A memory flickered in his mind, a moment when he had been confined to his bed, his body wracked with fever. His eye had been cut open again, maggots feeding on the festering edges of the wound after the maesters had removed additional tissue. In the delirium of fever and pain, he had wondered how different things might have been if he had been sent to Oldtown in his brother’s place–if he could have escaped the scorn and suffering that had shaped him into the weapon he had become. 

“I brought these with me from Oldtown,” Gwayne began, shifting his attention back to Daenera, his voice steady and confident, “they might serve as fitting wedding gifts.” His hand brushed off the book, laying them side by side. “They’re translated copies of The Nature of the Body by Maridos Irroran of Qarth, and The secrets of the Earth by Taenolla Vynaar of Qohor–”

Before he could continue, Daenera stood abruptly from her seat, her excitement palpable. She left the gilded sunflower behind, resting it next to the small wooden dragon Jaehaerys had gifted her earlier. Her fingers momentarily clenched the fabric of her skirts as she pushed herself from the chair, the pearls and beads adorning her gown rustling softly, brushing against the floor of the dais with a faint scratching. 

With more enthusiasm that she had shown for any of the other gifts, Daenera quickly made her way around the table to stand beside Gwayne, her eyes bright with anticipation as she approached. 

Aemond watched with a tightening within his chest as a wide, genuine smile spread across Daenera’s face, her eyes alight with excitement. Her delicate fingers traced the cover of the book with reverence, her love for its contents unmistakable. She looked up at Gwayne, her expression full of curiosity and gratitude. 

“Do you know what these are?” She asked, her voice brimming with enthusiasm. “These books hold wisdom on assorted medicinal practices prevalent across the Free Cities, alongside practical uses of herbs upon the flesh.”

“I would scarcely believe the Free Cities might hold any wisdom not already known to us,” Gwayne remarked, a brow lifting in skepticism.

“Though the customs of the Free Cities differ from ours, Ser Gwayne, their wisdom is not to be overlooked,” Daenera answered, “For instance, they describe a procedure where they drill open the skull to relieve pressure, or use fine needles to ease pain, reduce tension, and improve general health. I do not wish to limit myself.” Her fingers caressed a page, eyes flicking over the parchment before rising to meet Gwayne’s. “How did you find these? How–how did you know?”

Gwayne shifted slightly, his smile deepening, a hint of amusement flickering in his eyes as he glanced towards Aemond. “In truth, the idea wasn’t mine. A few months ago, my nephew wrote to his brother, requesting that he visit the Citadel and have these works translated and compiled. I never imagined they would become wedding gifts, but… here we are.”

Aemond had seldom taken to the pen in recent years to write to his brother–let alone his uncle. But when he had learned that Daenera had been searching for certain rare books at the library, pestering every maester in King’s Landing to no avail, he had taken to the pen to send a letter to Daeron, asking if he could procure the copies she sought. It appeared his brother had succeeded in finding them and had sent them along with their uncle. 

As Daenera’s fingers traced the spine of the book and flipped through the pages, her smile faltered.. Her gaze, usually sharp and intent, softened as she glanced at the scribbled pages, her brow furrowing slightly with a note of sadness.

“I will have to write to him and thank him for this,” she murmured softly, her voice measured, restrained. Shen then glanced up at Gwayne, offering a polite nod of acknowledgement. “And you as well, thank you, Ser.”

“You’re very welcome, princess,” Gwayne replied smoothly, turning his attention towards Aemond. There was a slight bow of his head, a gesture of respect that felt rehearsed, as if to appease both Aemond’s title and temperament–and only served to agitate him further. “May I have the honor of a dance with your wife?”

Aemond’s gaze flickered to Daenera, her expression unreadable as she closed the book gently, the tension in her fingers almost imperceptible. A slight scowl tugged at her brows at the request, undoubtedly because it was directed to him rather than her. His eye narrowed in response, the request hanging in the air between them like a blade. The thought of his wife–his wife–dancing with another man, his uncle no less, gnawed at him. His lips curved into a smirk, masking the simmering annoyance that threatened to rise to the surface.

Before he could respond, Daenera’s voice cut through the moment like a knife.

“You needn’t ask my husband, I would be honored to dance with you,” she said sharply, her tone holding a quiet edge as her gaze met his in defiance. There was a flicker of challenge in her eyes, one that Aemond recognized all too well. “A bride should dance at her own wedding, should she not? I've grown weary of sitting.”

The smirk on Aemond’s lips tightened ever so slightly as he felt Daenera’s words push between his ribs like a subtle, finely honed blade. Restless agitation stirred beneath his skin, itching at his fingertips and needling at his bones. Yet, he remained as still as a stone, gripping his composure with such force that it alone threatened to crack beneath the composure. 

He clenched his jaw, the sharpness of his thoughts twisting deeper as he watched her closely. She was playing her part, as expected–but the way she held his gaze, the way she took control of the moment, stirred something deeper within him. It tightened in his gut, made his blood simmer, but he said nothing. Instead, he remained still, his smirk slipping back into place. 

Aemond’s eye slid from Daenera to Gwayne, lingering on his uncle with a simmering edge–remembering his mother’s words–before he forced out a deceptively soft, “But of course…”

Gwayne, seemingly ever the gallant, extended his hand, and with her gaze still fixed on Aemond, Daenera took it. Her gown whispered against the steps as she descended with Gwayne, the fabric trailing behind her like a pale shadow as they approached the dance floor. The delicate train of her sleeves barely skimmed the stone, while the green of her cloak, abandoned on the chair beside Aemond, was left behind like he was.

Aemond’s eye followed them, sharp and unyielding, the agitation deeping in his chest. She moved with grace, and the crowd’s murmurs faded into the background as she took her place on the floor with Gwayne. His fingers curled tightly around the armrests of his chair, and though he kept his expression neutral–indifferent–there was no mistaking the possessiveness that burned within him. 

Aemond’s eye remained locked on her, the space between them feeling like a chasm, immeasurable and vast. The wood creaked faintly under his hold as he watched her take her place before Gwayne. Her hand rested in his uncle’s, the other poised on his shoulder, while Gwayne’s hand settled at her waist. 

A fierce spark ignited beneath Aemond’s skin, a heat that was both possessive and volatile, threatening to spill over. 

A new tune bega, so did the dance. Aemond sat back, dragging his blunt nails over the edge of the chair, his movements slow and measured, though the tension coiled within him like a tight spring. The sight of his wife in the arms of another man, gracefully moving across the floor, sent an ugly twist through his chest. He watched, silently seething, as the fabric of her gown flowed behind her, and her hair caught the light as they spun–a star burning through the colors of dusk.

He wished it was him–wished to feel her under his hand, to lead her across the floor. But he knew that if he asked, she would refuse. And even if she didn’t, it would be out of obligation, not desire. That was a truth he could not bear to confront tonight. So he remained in his seat, the air around him sharp and brittle, the desire to claim what was his warring with the restraint that held him back.

His gaze flickered down to the cloak left behind on her chair, the symbol of their union cast aside so easily. It pricked at him like a thorn, digging into his pride and fueling the possessive fire that burned in his veins. She might dance with Gwayne now, might let another man place his hand on her waist, but in the end, it was him to whom she was bound.

The gods had never granted Aemond anything–everything he possessed was something he had seized with his own hands. He had claimed Daenera as his wife, as he had claimed Vhagar, yet now, as he watched her dance, a genuine smile lighting her face, a thought gnawed at him. He had her, she bore his name, wore his cloak, but still, she was not truly his. She may be his wife, bound to him in the eyes of the realm, but her smiles, her laughter, her heart–they eluded him, slipping through his fingers like sand.

She was his. The thought echoed in his mind, but did little to soothe the ache deep within his chest. He had her, yes, but he wanted her in ways that went beyond mere possession. He craved her tough, her affection, her love–things he could not take by force, no matter how skilled he was at wielding a blade, things he had lost when he had chased her brother through the storm. The thought left him restless, the sharp edges of longing cutting through him. 

The boy stood there–Lucerys.

Still and unnatural, he stood a ghost amidst the living. The colors of the dancers–rich greens, shimmering golds, soft purples, and vibrant reds–whirled around him. The dancers, absorbed in the merriment and music, were oblivious to the pale figure in their midst. His presence was like a chill shadow cutting through the warm hues of the throne room–water dripping from his dark curls as if freshly pulled from the depths of the storm. His skin was ashen, lips blue and silent as death itself–and his eyes, blue hidden beneath a veil of white, staring right at him. 

His blood had felt no different from the rain when it had splattered against his face. 

Daenera spun past Lucerys, her gown flowing as she twirled to the tune of the music. She danced past the ghost of her brother without a second glance, unaware of the haunting presence that clung to the air around them. She danced on, moving past the dead boy, past the lingering chill and blood-soaked memories that pricked at the back of Aemond’s mind. 

Aemond’s eye followed Daenera’s every movement, his heart thudding heavily within his chest. The weight of his sins pressed against him like an iron vice. His love for her, his desperation to keep her, were tangled with the horrors of his deeds. And though she danced, beautiful and serene, he could not escape the creeping terror that her smile, like the ghost in their midst, would one day vanish into the cold silence that followed Lucery’s death. 

Aemond’s desire for Daenera was both pathetic and desperate. She belonged to him, yet the intensity of his yearning felt like a hollow victory. As he watched her, the realization that she was truly his wife, and yet he was left longing for her.

Yet, perhaps more dreadfully, he was hers.

That truth, though unspoken, pressed upon him with a weight he could not shake. It was as if she had claimed him just as surely as he had claimed her, though not with the same brutal finality. She had burrowed into his heart, the poison of her presence spreading through his veins, making him weak, vulnerable. He resented it as much as he craved it. Even now, watching her glide across the dance floor, he could feel the twisted seed of his desire for her growing, tangling around his soul.

Aemond clenched his jaw, his gaze burning with intensity as he followed her movements. She was his, and yet, not entirely. He had taken her as his wife, but what he wanted–the parts of her that were not just bound by duty–remained distant. And that truth, bitter and maddening, settled deep within him.

It was a fitting punishment for a monster, wasn’t it?

[duckiemimi]

Hi Mimi hoping you’re doing good If you don’t mind me asking do you have any headcanons personal or not on gojo and geto or any characters in general?

AAA what a lovely question! thank u for asking me! though i will go out to say, i think a lot of my headcanons have interspersed into some of my analyses (and fics!) 😭 i can’t help it—they’re so dear to me, sometimes i forget where i start and where they end :’) i try my best to separate, though! some of my headcanons are serious, some are plausible, and some just make me laugh. i’ll make this into a little list then:

⟡ geto and gojo did NOT get along when they first met. it was during their first class—yaga had just asked a question about what it means to be a jujutsu sorcerer. geto, the then budding honor student, raised his hand and voiced his thoughts (something righteous, something justice-driven). gojo, who was silent and aloof the whole class, couldn’t help but comment. they fought in the classroom an hour into their first day. thank god the gojo clan has money because they obliterated half the building.

(interestingly enough, that show of power was taken into consideration when they got promoted to special grades a month later!)

⟡ shoko comes from a jujutsu clan. it’s not a prestigious one like the big three, but they’re still very respected, akin to the inumaki clan. their innate familial CT is RCT—it’s why shoko couldn’t explain it well to gojo that one time; it was just muscle memory to her, innate! the loneliness took some time to learn, though.

⟡ utahime and gakuganji are related and come from one clan. they specialize in ritualistic, supporting CTs (like in the manga!). utahime went to school in tokyo, but moved back to kyoto because her family lives there and because gakuganji was the principal in that branch. (nepo baby utahime? then again, that could be said for a lot of characters here.) mei mei is her upperclassman by three years.

⟡ when gojo was younger, his retainers (along with multiple bodyguards, hidden and in plain sight) would take him out to walk around the city. it’s why he doesn’t mind traveling far for his missions because while they pile up, he enjoys the time he spends exploring different places.

(it’s also why we saw him roaming the city alone in that one panel. maybe he was ten or twelve there? he’d sneak out during his homeschool lessons when it got boring. “tell me something i don’t know.”—a pre-pubescent gojo, probably.)

⟡ during these walks he used to go on as a child, his retainers would try to prevent him from lingering too long at one place because people talk. the people in town were all afraid and in awe of him; resentful, curious, scared. he looked different, he felt different, and every time he glanced in their direction, it would unnerve them to no end. a young gojo didn’t quite understand why at first. sometimes, they’d whisper the occasional cruel comment amongst themselves. gojo’s eyes are great, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hear.

whenever they’d reach the end of their walks, back at the gojo estate, his retainers would always crouch down and cup his face, darting their eyes around, wary that a clan member might see (even worse—his parents). they’d tell him that everything those people said were lies and weren’t true at all. they’d tell him that he’s a good child. it’s a core memory for gojo.

⟡ geto was in the judo club in middle school. it made him feel a little less lonely at home and it was an outlet for all his frustrations, for all the things he couldn’t say. he was more himself when he moved. then in jujutsu high, he took all the martial arts lessons very seriously because now he had reason to fight and train so hard; a purpose; a meaning. even ten years after defecting, his form and technique was still impeccably perfect.

⟡ geto was a social smoker, meanwhile shoko is a chronic one.

⟡ geto stopped smoking after he took in mimiko and nanako.

⟡ despite his busy, busy schedule, a freshly graduated gojo always made time to see how megumi and tsumiki were doing. he’d help them with their homework (tsumiki was always receptive; it took megumi some time to accept homework help), he’d shower them in souvenir sweets, and he’d walk megumi’s dogs with him. he tried his best! he still does!

⟡ contrary to popular opinion, gojo does sleep. or at least, he tries. it doesn’t really count as sleep if it’s all dream, though.

⟡ in the early days, geto tried to get mimiko and nanako to call him anything but master. after a year of them calling him that, it just stuck, and in geto’s head at the time, it fit his public image, so he just stopped trying.

⟡ mimiko and nanako enrolled in non-sorcerer schools. education is important, geto told them, but the sanitization they had to go through at home, after school, was tedious. geto would always ask them what they learned in class, making sure they weren’t empathizing with the non-sorcerers, reminding them that facts are facts and there is no meaning to them. sometimes, while mimiko and nanako wait for a cult-member to pick them up after school, they’d watch their classmates hug their parents at the gate. sometimes, they’d think of calling him papa.

⟡ geto had a crush on gojo in high school, halfway through their first year. gojo never thought about that (romance, relationships, and such) till his third year. they never acted on anything during the two years in between when they were constantly together.

⟡ whenever geto and gojo would meet during those ten years, it would always be out of gojo’s request, though he’d deny it if you asked. geto would always try to stay away (he’s burned the bridge, goddammit, he can’t keep risking the distance), but then he’d take one look at gojo and it would be hard to. he’d always regret it after.

⟡ the first time shoko and utahime drank together, it was a little after shoko’s graduation. drunk and delirious, shoko started talking about how lonely she was, and how frustrated she was because her two best friends are so fucking stupid. utahime helped her home and swore to never tell anybody about it. now they drink together pretty often.

these are the ones at the top of my head! maybe i’ll add on if i remember some more, but thanks again for asking!

[xfindingtrouble]

after percy meets pelor, he cries. in private, of course - it's not something he wants to do in the face of the potential end of the world. there is more to worry about than his own baggage, there is more to focus on than his Beef with the almighty. but there is something surreal about facing the dawnfather.

though percy claims he's never prayed much [ & i think, for the most part that's true ] I'm sure he has when things were darkest. he probably prayed that someone would come save & cass, that they would both survive it, that he may be forgiven by the end of it all... but there was never an answer. in fact, the only reason they got whitestone back at all was because they did it them damn selves. sarenrae had a hand in it via pike but the dawnfather didn't help them.

i'm sure in hindsight, he'd see that pelor had a hand in saving his people. pelor wasn't absent, not by any means, vox machina cold just handle their own problems. he & cass survived it on their own, they grow on their own terms, but not without suffering. but there were other lives in the balance! but percy is just a single perspective in the greater picture. he is mortal, he is selfish, he is petty [ i say with love ] & as much as he likes to think he knows it all, he doesn't. he can't.

but there is still this resentment that lingers forever. because percy asked for help when he needed it most & was failed by the gods again & again. i think this is also partially because the gods work with people who are willing to meet them halfway & percy spent so long looking for a sign that he never took that leap of faith necessary? in fact, Cassandra was the one who finally trusted the gods with her fate & then paid a very expensive price for it.

but anyways there is something so visceral about facing any god, let alone the one you begged for mercy & never delivered it. the god who knows who they are, greets them as vox machina. proof that he'd been paying attention. also sarenrae saying that she hears every prayer is like salt in the wound for percy because it leaves this question of what would happen if he had prayed to her? what would have been different? would he be kinder, better, more consistent? he'll never know! it's soo much worse when pelor claims that whitestone is under his watch & keep. it's honest, yes, but it's so personal.

of course he would never want to change the journey he's taken to try & heal but i feel like it poses this question of ' what if i didn't have to take that journey at all ' which of course he would have... but percy deals in a lot of extremes, especially revolving around guilt & sense of self. he wants to say he wouldn't change anything he'd been through but there's so much he would undo if he had the chance. he's plagued by regret his whole life, he just learns how to manage it. though the feeling lingers, he learns how to forgive himself & the person that was even he wished he never had to become that person to survive.

also it's worth noting that this is like the straw that breaks the camels back. he'd just fought & killed delilah, vax died & came back to life, he'd faced another god only hours before. what they're dealing with is bigger than any single perspective.

he thought that maybe his role as a hero was over, though he knew better. all while he wonders in the back of his head whether or not whitestone is safe & when vecna is going to target it because he knows it's coming. there wouldnt be a ziggeraut under his home if it wasn't. delilah would have never chosen whitestone as her base of operations if it wasn't important. There would be a big, ugly cry at some point but it just makes him sick!

especially bcs he wants to believe. it feels like he wants to say he does, but this is something he knows he can't lie about. he sees vex, finding faith, right before his eyes & there's still this bit of him that remembers. that fixates on his unanswered prayers as a scared child. he trusts her, he's happy for her, he loves her... & maybe he's jealous. just a little bit, hidden beneath the rest of it.

also it is sooo worth noting that percy is not a crier. he's cried enough, there aren't many tears left for him that he hasn't already shed. but sometimes he can't help it.

[obi-wkenobi]

an obikin fic in which Obi is pining (and is hopelessly in love) with Anakin from afar but he thinks he is too old and that Anakin deserves only the best but Obi has his happy ending

Hi anon, thanks for this! I hope the below fic is something you had in mind. 😊

Anakin was next on the Council’s agenda, and from the hastily written report they had received hours before, the meeting was unlikely to be a quick one. They hadn’t seen each other in weeks, what with Anakin mostly touring the outer rim and himself left on Coruscant. It wouldn’t do well for the other Council members to know, but Obi-Wan had missed him. He missed them. The Team.

And if Obi-Wan missed Anakin more than was entirely appropriate, then only he would ever know. There was no need to embarrass himself after all.

Sweat and dust darkened Anakin’s robes as he walked into the chamber, his curls plastered to the back of his neck and usually golden skin a chestnut brown. Tivol was a hot world, Obi-Wan recalled dumbly, with scorching heat that rivaled Tatooine’s, and Force, if possible, it had made Anakin even more beautiful.

The sight of him hit Obi-Wan hard, both by the frantic thud of his old heart and the deep and low drum below his belt, sparking adrenaline in his veins like the crackle of an electroblade. He shook his head, urgently trying to gather his wits after having them knocked out of him due to the simple sight of his former Padawan.

“Masters,” Anakin said, bowing respectfully and casting them a small smile, his eyes lingering on Obi-Wan.

“Knight Skywalker,” Master Windu said, “the Council is glad that you have returned, your report was most...brief in its detailing about your success on Tivol.”

Anakin flushed, the red tint wonderfully darkening his cheeks even more. “My apologies, I was too engaged with the mission whilst there and only remembered the report on my way back.”

Oh, Anakin, he thought fondly, chucking his erstwhile Padawan an exasperated look and privately delighting in watching Anakin squirm as a result.

Master Windu leaned forward, disappointment written plainly on his face. “You forgot?!”

Anakin’s face went from endearingly embarrassed to outright irate, turning a telltale purple as his anger grew. That wasn’t what Obi-Wan wanted to see. Anakin had had a difficult few weeks, he didn’t deserve to be reprimanded so soon upon his return.

“No harm has come from it, surely, Master?” Obi-Wan interrupted softly, stubbornly keeping his composure as Master Windu’s deep brown eyes settled upon him rigidly. “Anakin can add to the report today if necessary.”

A few seats down from him, a baritone chuckle sounded. “Knight Skywalker, your former Master has come to your defence once again. He does that quite a bit you know,” Master Plo observed.

Obi-Wan spluttered, indignant. “I do not.”

“Don’t you?” Master Windu asked, an eyebrow arched knowingly.

Now it was his turn to blush, except when he did so his face turned awfully red and splotchy. Charming on someone as lively and youthful as Anakin, but utterly demoralising on an older man like him.

Anakin peered at him with an odd intrigue in his sharp blue eyes. “Do you?”

“I-I…” he fumbled, victim to a verbal ineptitude that he very rarely experienced.

Apparently, Anakin found that amusing. Those enigmatic eyes shined with mirth and a mischievous smile settled on his face, no doubt delighting in the flustering of his usually impervious former Master.

“Perhaps I am guilty of doing so on occasion,” Obi-Wan admitted reluctantly.

It was worth it. Anakin ducked his head shyly, coyly looking at Obi-Wan from beneath long, golden lashes. They stared at one another intensely for what felt like an infinite moment. Each agonising second made him hot all over, heat making his vision hazy, and he fought every instinct telling him to go to Anakin. To pull him into his arms and to bite at that full bottom lip.

But he wouldn’t. Anakin didn’t want him like that, why would he? There were others who could give him what Obi-Wan could not. Younger, better, people who were able to give him everything that he deserved.

“Perhaps you can tell me about those occasions over dinner?”

What?—

Obi-Wan’s wandering gaze snapped back to Anakin’s face. Embarrassment had returned, but there was also the familiar hardness of determination. Had Anakin really just said that? Was Anakin flirting with him? Right here, in the Council chamber—

“Force help me,” Master Windu suddenly muttered. “Can we please get back to the mission report?”

Obi-Wan slowly turned to look at him, face beet red and mortified by what had just transpired. He rubbed a grounding hand through his coarse beard. “Of course, Master.”

Throughout the remainder of the meeting, Obi-Wan kept his eyes firmly planted anywhere but on Anakin, convinced that should their gazes meet then he would do something horribly inappropriate. Just when exactly had he become this man? Wildly passionate and besotted with a man who could enchant him with his insufferable teasing and his loud, booming laugh.

Oh, how Obi-Wan ached to hear that laugh. It had been too long since he had enjoyed the thrill of Anakin’s company.

By the time the Council adjourned for the day, Obi-Wan had mostly been able to purposefully forget what had occurred hours earlier. So sure that he had misinterpreted Anakin’s request, and certain it was only a result of his own hopeless longing, Anakin wanting him in return never being a possible explanation.

“It’s about time.”

Frowning, Obi-Wan finished standing from his Council chair and turned to Master Plo. “Excuse me?”

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure, but he thought the Jedi Master was grinning beneath his mask. “I said it’s about time. That doesn’t mean I want to hear about all the sordid details in the morning though, Master Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan gaped at him. Sordid details? About what? “I’m afraid I still don’t understand, Master.”

Yes, Obi-Wan thought, the Jedi Master was definitely smiling, he could see the recognisable creases by his eyes now.

His gleeful reply also gave him away, “Go and get him, Master Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan stared after him as he walked away. Go and get him, Obi-Wan repeated to himself as he made his way to his quarters. What in the galaxy did that mean? Today had been one of the strangest in recent memory. Force, what was he even going to say when he next saw Anakin?

His quarters should have been dark when he entered, but they weren’t, something was...flickering?

What in the Force—

The room was lit by a slew of candles placed around the dining room, light blinking alongside the subtle shifts in the air. The room looked remarkably serene, the candles backlit by Coruscant’s sunset providing hues of a dusty orange-pink. On the table was some food, steam rising from plates, and a bottle of red wine placed in the middle.

Alderaanian wine—Obi-Wan’s favourite.

“Hello there, Master.”

Obi-Wan swivelled to look at Anakin, the alluring lines of his body resting deliberately casually against the kitchen counter, surveying Obi-Wan with a nervous, but amused smile tilted on his lips.

“Hello, Anakin,” he croaked. “What’s all this?”

“Dinner,” Anakin said, grinning when Obi-Wan rolled his eyes.

“Yes, I can see that,” he retorted, voice dry and fond. “Why is there dinner, and err—” he blushed furiously, hoping that the darkness hid it, “candles.”

“Because I said that we should have dinner together.”

Obi-Wan tugged at his beard, thinking. “No, you asked if we could.”

Anakin sighed, naked, frustrated affection sitting on his face. “Details, Master.”

Obi-Wan hummed and continued stroking his beard, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. He observed the situation again, considering the impossible...Anakin was not known for subtlety, perhaps...Anakin wanted him? Maybe Anakin was trying to tell him something.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and took a deep breath. “Anakin—”

Before he could say more, Anakin smiled at him, almost shyly, before walking up to him, and then...then—

Anakin’s lips were on his. They fit together as he had always imagined they would, their lips slanting together and meeting with an intoxicating heat. Obi-Wan wound one hand to cup his head, fingers threading through dishevelled locks, the other hand falling to his lower back, pulling him close. Their lips parted at the instinctive pressure, their tongues slipping into each other’s mouths. Anakin moaned obscenely, the sound more erotic than his wildest dreams.

Eventually, Obi-Wan gathered enough awareness to break the kiss with a wet sound. “Anakin—what?”

“Master,” Anakin panted, the honorific making Obi-Wan groan indecently, “I can’t believe how oblivious you are.”

Obi-Wan scoffed. “I resent that—”

Anakin laughed and kissed the underside of his jaw. “It’s true.”

“I just…” he murmured against bitten lips, “I never thought you would be interested in an old man like me.”

Anakin’s brows furrowed. “You’re not old.”

“I’m sixteen years your senior, Anakin.”

“So? That doesn’t bother me, I’ll want you even when you’re actually old.”

“Hmm,” Obi-Wan sighed, gently biting at the hollow of Anakin’s throat. “You might not feel that way when you’re older and you meet someo—”

Anakin jerked his head back up and kissed him again, desperate and deep. “No,” he stressed, “I want you, I’ve wanted you for years, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows jumped at that. Years? His observation skills clearly needed improving.

“Do you believe me?” Anakin asked, pulling back to look at him.

Futilely, he looked for any indication of deception. It was pointless, want and need sat as clear as day on Anakin’s face.

“I do.”

Anakin surged against him, pressing their mouths together once more, and the both of them smiled in delight as their dinner lay forgotten.

[gothicdreamon]

FINALLY SAPNAP'S LORE!

I am so excited for Sapnap's lore.

The production seemed to be formal (more like Quackity's lore streams) however I hope that it's just a "first step" so he can do more casual lore/semi-lore streams in the future if he wants, a little like how the Las Nevadas group are doing right now (this is me being WAY too hopeful).

But let's talk about all the possibilities Sapnap's character in the Dream SMP has, because without doing much, c!Sapnap is in the middle of so much complex relationship's all around the server.

First off, the trailer is Sapnap watching the community house and remembering the time it was blown up with a sword in his hand, this obviously alludes to Dream, their past and the promise Sapnap made when he went to visit him in prison. (Side note: does anyone remember the cognitive dissonance of that stream? They were just fooling around and then Sapnap just turned around and started doing super heavy lore. The whiplash I felt, geez). Sapnap clearly still has some unresolved feelings about Dream, he sees his former friend as a traitor, someone who should have cared about him and have his back but instead left him, opposed to his projects, hurt his friends and destroyed items and building of significance to them, to their history. Dream hurt him and Sapnap resents him for it (even if he says he doesn't) to the point where Sapnap made the promise, the oath, that if Dream was to escape prison, he was going to be the one to take his last canon life. From time to time, Sapnap can have a strong sense of justice (this doesn't include pets) and will act depending in what he thinks it's right so putting Dream's life to an end in order to prevent him from escaping his well-deserved punishment it's something he's willing to do because he believes that's the correct thing to do, however the interesting part is that he doesn't just want him dead, he wants to be the one who kills him. Not Tommy, even though Dream very intentionally abused him. Not Sam, even though it is in his job as the Warden to go through that kind of extent. Not anyone else, but Sapnap. He only sees himself worthy of doing such a thing, why? Maybe because Sapnap actually knew him, they were best friends, brothers almost. They built and fought and laughed, all side by side. They were family and Sapnap remembers that, maybe part of him still believes it and that's why it disturbs him so much. We can see that in the way he talks about Dream with lingering nostalgia, the doubtfulness in his voice when he went to visit him in prison, asking him about how he feels, wanting to communicate, hoping his old friend still remains somehow. He still wanted to be friends. Sapnap even was open to forgiveness with the condition that everyone that Dream hurt was too. He wants to be the one who puts the sword through Dream's heart not because he hates him but because he loved him. If Dream were to die, it shouldn't be by the hands of someone who only saw him as a villain, but instead someone who met the good in him, making the oath of killing him somewhat merciful and somewhat more disdainful. Sapnap believes is in his right to end that life because, in his eyes, the treason committed by turning his back to him and George just to become something akin to a power-hungry monster was Dream's biggest crime. ("You hurt a lot of people but you hurt specifically me".)

It's worth mentioning too that Sapnap is the only person to know that Ranboo used to consistently visit Dream in prison (aside from Ranboo, Sam and Dream, obviously).

Now, in the trailer he also pictures Kinoko Kingdom and the title is "Memories Gone". This could be an indicator that Sapnap is battling with mixed emotions and trying to sever the ties he still has to the past. The title also connects with Karl, who's memories are literally fading away, and Quackity, who is completely confirmed to want to move away from the past. It looks like the lore most likely be a series of flashbacks so I'm curious how back in the past we'll be shown and how close to the present we're going to get.

The conflict with Quackity and Karl. They were supposed to be fiancees and as I was literally writing this Karl tweeted, so Kinoko Kingdom lore is basically confirmed. Kinoko Kingdom lore, huh? In the nation there is Karl, Sapnap and George. We could finally see what tensions are between them and Quackity after he went on to create Las Nevadas and they kind of ditched him. We could also finally see what roles each individual is supposed to play in the administration of the nation as well as how Karl's constant mysterious leaves and George's curse of sleep affect it. The place was supposed to be a fresh start where they could be happy and safe, but it has basically turned into a ghost town. The beautiful buildings and scenery hasn't been touched. I don't think they even have properly installed houses in the place. I feel it is the time for some conflict to happen. Will the engagement be called off? There is definitely some resentment from Quackity's part, so how do Sapnap and Karl feel? If a fight arises, will Kinoko Kingdom become rival to Las Nevadas? Sapnap has a quite amicable relationship with Tommy (they'll fight in a heartbeat, but they also don't hate each other) so I wonder if there could be an alliance of some sort. There are so many open questions about the place, so hopefully some of them get answered. My bar for Kinoko isn't exactly high so my only wish right now is that the place gets used somehow and that's it. Now, I now this most likely won't happened, but I kind of wish there's some lore with Niki, as she is an anarchist and wasn't to happy about a nation installing itself right above her city.

Lastly, this is more of a personal wish, but Sapnap is BadBoyHalo's canonically son, so if we got some reaction or thoughts about his canonically father being brainwashed and controlled by a foreign mysterious somewhat deity, I'd be over the moon. Unfortunately, cc!Sapnap doesn't seem too interested in the Egg Lore. Oh well, one can dream.

I wan't going anywhere with this, I just wanted to ramble because it's MOTHERFUCKING SAPNAP LORE!!!!

[ijustwant2write]

Underestimated-Halfdan The Black x Reader

(GIF credit to @jorindelle​)

Requested by anonymous: ‘Hi! Could you please write an imagine about Halfdan? If so, with smut please ☺️ thank you in advance, I love your imagines!’

Characters: Halfdan the Black x Reader, Harald Finehair x Reader (brother-in-law)

Meanings: (Y/N)=Your name

Warnings: SMUT, swearing, kissing, mention of weapons, mention of battle, fighting/violence, touching/groping, dirty talk, mention of cum, fluff

                                        *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The sun was beating down on us harshly, despite the season turning cold, but with no clouds in the sky we found ourselves sweating as we trained. I was in charge today, these young people knew the basics, though they thought that meant they were ready. They had a long way to go before they were fully prepared for battle.

"Rest for a short while. Lay your weapons down, have some water, try to get out of the sun. We shall be sparring next." I announced, laughing at their relieved faces.

"(Y/N)?" one of the girls called as they sat under the nearest tree, whilst another girl grabbed a hug to pour everyone a cup of water.

"Yes?" I sat down with them.

"Is it true that on the last raid, you found yourself surrounded by five warriors on the battlefield? And you had no choice but to fight them off yourself?!" 

"Yes, it's true. That was a difficult battle, even without being ambushed. You see, we weren't raiding a helpless village, or a meek town. These people were prepared, since the first viking raid years and years ago, they had been training, just like we do. Although they were not up to our standards of skill, they had courage, which, at first, helped them. I had managed to cut down anyone in my path, until they caught me out.”

"So how did you escape?"

"She didn't." someone else spoke up.

All of our heads turned to look at Birger, who was leaning back against the tree, sipping on his water as he smirked.

I raised an eyebrow at him."Oh? I didn't realise you were there Birger, please elaborate."

His expression didn't falter as he sat up."It doesn't make sense. Anyone with enough sense you see that. You say you're able to fight your way through everyone, and suddenly you're in trouble?"

"Well, Birger, if you had ever been in a battle, or even a small scrap for that matter, you would understand that you cannot control everything. Even the greatest warriors find themselves in trouble at times. That's why training is so important. You might learn something if you paid attention instead of gazing at yourself in the reflection of your sword."

The others snickered under their breaths, causing Birger to scowl.“I am going to be the finest warrior-”

“Yes, you will be due to my training. You’re young and naive, but over time you will learn discipline. Everyone, you have five minutes before we start again. And thanks to Birger, we will start with double conditioning.”

It was cruel to the others, but the look of resentment on Birger’s face secretly brought me joy. It was sadistic, though he deserved it. He was right, he would become a great fighter, just like his parents (who were good friends of mine, hence why I had agreed to take him on). I had no idea where his attitude came from, all of his family were very humble; however, he was the eldest of all their children, who the rest of were girls, and as the only son, he was the one who would carry on the family line. And with parents known for their fighting skills, he also had the pressure of becoming a warrior. 

“Birger, may I talk to you?” I said as I dismissed everyone at the end of the day.

He halted in his steps, and I could tell he rolled his eyes before turning around. “Yes?”

“I want you to keep training, I want to keep training you. But I will not tolerate you speaking of me in such an ill manner and spreading lies.”

He shrugged, looking away.“If what you say is true, why are so defensive about it?”

“I am defending my honour. I have fought beside your parents to ensure that the children of this town, children like yourself, have a good and rich future. There is a thin line between confidence and arrogance.”

“I get this speech every day from my father, I don’t need to listen to you too. Especially from someone who uses her husband’s titles to her advantage-”

“Be careful what you say boy, otherwise you shall lose your tongue.” Halfdan suddenly appeared behind me, causing my head to whip up to look at him.

Birger looked frightened, but didn’t back down.“You can’t do that.”

“Who says?” Halfdan’s arm slipped around my waist.

“My parents would-”

“Your parents would thank me. Go on, run home boy.”

It was easy to see that Birger wanted to bite back, his hand was even on the hilt of his sword (a beautiful piece of weaponry gifted to him, I had been jealous of it). Knowing he would get into more trouble or embarrass himself, he sulked away, picking up his pace to catch up with his friends.

“I can handle Birger.” I moaned to my husband, turning around to face him.

He smirked.“I know, but I love seeing him shit his trousers.”

I giggled.“Yes, so do I. Although I would have liked to do that myself, thank you.”

He shamelessly let his hands slide down to grope my arse, pulling me close as he leaned down to kiss me. I held onto either side of his face, loving how he was treating me in that moment. He moaned against my mouth, and although I could feel myself getting worked up, we had other places to be, and I was in the mood for teasing him.

“Halfdan.” I breathed out as his lips travelled down my neck.“We have your brother’s birthday feast.”

He pulled away, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.“And?”

I laughed.“We need to get ready. I still need to bathe.”

“Well, we should bathe together-”

“You’ll make us late.” I gently took his arms off me.

“Is there something wrong with you today? Are you feeling alright?” he put his hand against my forehead.

I removed it, kissing his hand before taking it in my own.“I’m absolutely fine. Let’s go.”

It was hilarious seeing his reaction. He was gobsmacked as I dragged him along. Of course throughout our relationship, we had teased each other like this before, but it had been a long time since I had fun like this. Halfdan was used to fucking women whenever he liked long before me, and used to making love to me regularly. However, in this moment he was confused as to why I didn’t want him to take me in the field, especially since we hadn’t slept together for over a week, due to clashing schedules. 

As soon as we stepped into our home, I made a beeline for our room, ordering the thralls to start my bath. Another thrall already had my dress laid out on a chair, along with the shoes and jewellery. I was admiring the pieces, knowing that Halfdan had followed me, and I refrained from giggling when he ordered the thralls to leave. 

“Halfdan,” I faked shock,“they need to run my bath, I have to get ready!”

“Why are you so insistent on being on time? We’ve been late many times before.”

“Because we have a reputation to uphold.”

“A reputation?” he walked closer to me, wrapping his arms around my waist, his chest against my back.“We’re known for loving each other very much.”

“You grow weak in your age Halfdan.”

He tensed.“Say that again.”

“Are you scared you won’t last the night anymore? You’ll cum just looking at me?”

He quickly turned me around to face him, pushing me against a nearby wall.“You think I can’t fuck you all night? Afraid I won’t be able to make you scream my name until your throat is hoarse, and make your legs shake so much that you can’t walk the day? You don’t think I can kiss every inch of your body, making you squirm so much that you just beg me to take you? You know how you look the next day, marked by me so everyone knows what we did the night before, and everyone know how good I can fuck you?”

Although I could feel myself getting wetter, the stubborn part of me wanted to keep us this act, because when Halfdan was riled up, the sex was on another level.“Halfdan, I need to get ready.”

The shit eating grin that had slowly formed on his face as he teased me instantly disappeared. He was pissed off. Slowly moving away from me, his fingers lingered in mine.

“R-right.” he mumbled.

“I’ll be as quick as I can. Go, I’m sure the thralls have everything ready for you too.” I pecked him on the lips before ushering him out, becoming giddy at the thought of us fucking later. 

With a smile on my face the entire time I was getting ready, I caught the thralls exchanging looks, they knew what was coming tonight. I felt slightly bad for them, they couldn’t escape the noise we created. But Halfdan and I had never been afraid for other’s to know how much we loved each other.

Surprisingly, Halfdan didn’t try anything on the way to the hall. He knew I wasn’t giving in so easily. We greeted Harald upon our arrival, who was already in the midst of a group of friends. Guests were trickling in, we were just on time. Harald’s smile beamed as he spotted us, arms opening for a rough, manly hug with his brother, before gently embracing me with a light kiss on both cheeks. Our thralls added his gifts to the growing pile as we were handed drinks, starting off the night that was sure to end well.

“Brother, you seem tense this evening. You have your beautiful wife beside you, what could you be upset about?” Harald laughed as we sat at the head table, just finished with our elaborate feast. 

“No I am not.” Halfdan poorly defended himself.

“Speaking of wives,” I interrupted, leaning across my husband, hand resting on his thigh,“shouldn’t you be down there dancing with eligible young ladies?”

Harald cleared his throat.“Well, I’m not much of a dancer-”

“Nonsense! You need to find yourself a wife! They’re all dying for you to even glance in their direction. And if you don’t find someone tonight, it’s your birthday, you should be having fun.”

He grinned at me.“Well, if you insist. It is my birthday after all.”

I laughed as my brother-in-law practically ran down to the gaggle of women in the room, seeing him manage to convince one to dance with him. The music was upbeat, a lot of people were now dancing, the alcohol in their systems giving them more confidence. They were singing as they danced, laughing the whole time. Looking at Halfdan, you wouldn’t think you were at a cheerful celebration. He noticed me suppressing my laugh, but when his foul eyes darted to look at me, I couldn’t contain it any longer. Heads still turned to look at me as I laughed, despite the volume of the music. 

“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself.” Halfdan spat.

I struggled to speak, talking between laughs.“Yes...I really am...I’m sorry my love....but your face!”

He just scoffed at me, downing the rest of his drink.

“Oh Halfdan, you grow grumpy with age.” I leaned over, fluttering my eyelashes at him.

“Now you call me old.”

I hummed, slowly sliding my hand across his thigh.“You are so tense, as if you were made of stone.”

“I will not play your games.”

“That’s shame.” I lowly said, rubbing my hand on the inside of his leg, moving further upwards.“I can always stop if you want.”

He took in a shaky breath, looking out at the crowd dancing. I placed my hand on top of his crotch, grabbing him firmly through his trousers, enjoying it as he closed his eyes. I moved myself to sit on his lap, nothing out of the ordinary, there were many couples doing just the same. With one arm still working on his crotch, and the other wrapped around the back of his neck, I started to kiss him. Halfdan took no time in grabbing my arse, trying to pull me closer to start grinding on him. Using my dress skirts to cover his lap, I used that to hide my hand disappearing into his trousers. Halfdan’s head tilted back as I gripped onto him, working him like I know I could and how he liked it. His moans were quiet, he didn’t want to draw too much attention to himself, though I could tell he was starting to struggle.

As my pace sped up, and his body began tensing up even more, I kissed him one last time before completely stopping, even standing up to expose his hard member. He rustled with his trousers, glaring at me as I started to walk away. I managed to make it outside before he grabbed me.

“You think you can just leave me unfinished and exposed like that?!” he snapped.

“I just did.”

“All day with this foolery! Well it stops right now.”

He laced his fingers with mine, dragging me away from the hall, and I started to get excited until I realised we were headed towards the stables. I ripped my arm away from him, holding up my arms as he tried to grab me again.

“You are not fucking me in a smelly stable, we are going home to our bed.” I sternly demanded.

“I cannot wait that long.” he growled.

“Halfdan, I’m not a whore. I’m your wife and you’ll do well to remember that.”

As soon as the last word left my lips, I stormed off in the direction of our home, smirking when Halfdan let out a loud groan. But he soon caught up to me, holding my hand again, kissing it to try and get me on his good side. When he saw my lips twitching up into a smile, he grinned, pulling me along, urging my feet to go faster.

We ran through our home to our bedroom, and I was immediately pushed against the door, Halfdan’s fingers already working to untie my dress. Having done it so many times before, it easily fell off my shoulders, causing me to shiver at the sudden coldness that hit my skin. Halfdan’s hands were warm as he ran them down my body, squeezing my breasts before travelling further down. One arm wrapped around my waist as his other hand started to rub my clit, slowly circling it. I let out a breathy mouth, already rotating my hips against him. His hand on my waist gripped me, it kept me in place as he slipped in a finger, despite wanting to write against him. As he entered another finger, he got onto his knees, driving his face in between my legs, his tongue working with his fingers to pleasure me. I gripped onto his hair as my knees buckled, trying to keep myself standing.

Whining as he stopped and got back onto his feet, my mouth dropped open as he licked his fingers in front of me.“Get on the bed.”

I moved instantly, sitting on the edge of it. He kept eye contact with me as he stalked over, his steps agonisingly slow. Knowing how this usually goes, I started to spread my legs for him, about to move back onto my elbows when he stopped me. I was looking up at him through my eyelashes, knowing what he wanted. It was my turn to undress him now. As he removed his shirt, I unbuckled his trousers again, pulling them down as I cast my eyes on his dick It was still hard, and I took him into my mouth as he grabbed the back of my head, tugging at my hair like I had done to him. I moaned around him, using my hands to take what was left of him as he pushed my head back and forth on his dick. I used to struggle to take him on with my mouth, but after so much practice, I could do it whenever I wanted to please my husband without hesitation.

Removing his hands from the back of my head, I took in a big breath of air as I pulled away from him, wiping away the saliva around my mouth. I didn’t want him to cum in my mouth, I wanted him to cum inside of me. He pushed me onto my back, flipping me onto my front. I raised my arse in the air for him, spreading my legs and reaching through them to touch myself. He hated when I did that, only he wanted to pleasure me. Grabbing onto my arse cheeks, he used his dick to tease my clit, sliding it along it and using my wetness to soak him. 

“I’m going to fuck you so hard.” he growled.“You deserve this, you’re going to be screaming, begging for me to stop because it’s too much, but I’ll keep going until I’ve cum inside you.”

“Please...” I said,“please Halfdan, I want you inside of me.”

I felt the head at my entrance, he slowly slid inside of me, both of us moaning at how each other felt. Halfdan wasted no time, starting to thrust into me, hard and slow at first before getting faster and faster. His fingers made my skin sting as he gripped at it, pulling me back and forth harshly. At one point he stopped, pushing my knees together to make me even tighter. 

“Fuck, Halfdan!” I cried out, head shoved into the bed as I clung onto the furs beneath me.“You’re so good!”

He slapped my arse.“You feel so good! Shit, I’m going to cum.”

“Not yet.” I managed to say, somehow crawling away from him.

I already missed the feeling him inside of me. Moving further up the bed, I rolled onto my back, opening my legs for him. He climbed onto the bed, lining himself up with me again. Halfdan laid on top, kissing me as he slid inside again, his fast pace picking up again. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he pined my arms down. It was intense, he was looking down at me as he continued to fuck me. I held eye contact with him for as long as I could, but the pleasure was all too much. As I got close, I threw my head back, crying out his name. He cried out as he came inside of me, but kept thrusting to finish me off. Sitting up, he put my legs over his shoulders, reaching down to rub my clit to send me over the edge. My legs shook as I came, screaming out his name one last time.

He gently lowered my legs, enjoying how much they were still shaking and how sensitive everything felt. He laid beside me, pulling me close to him and kissing me softly. 

“That was fucking amazing.” I breathed out, cuddling close to him.

“You’ve been bad today, on purpose.” he smirked.

“Yes.” I giggled.“But isn’t the sex worth it?”

He reluctantly smiled.“Yes.”

“I like teasing you. Have you noticed I’ve got better over the years?”

“Indeed you have. but you learnt from the best. Look at you, you’re still shaking.”

He cupped me, and I winced, clutching onto his arm.“Yes. Just a few more minutes.”

“Hm?”

“You didn’t think that was it did you?”

“Oh, there’s more?”

“Tut tut Halfdan. You grow tired in your old age.”

He suddenly straddled me again.“I’ll show you old age.”

[kim-miri]

HALF(have a little fun) pt. ix

→ one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight

→ Sayomi Zoldyck is the eldest child and twin sister to Illumi, of the renowned Zoldyck family of assassins. At the age of ten she’s taken away to Meteor City by her mother, Kikyo Zoldyck, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, as well as newborn Killua, and left to fend for herself. This is the story of the long-lost Zoldyck and those she becomes acquainted with, all while she just wants to have a little fun.

» part nine / ?

» pairing: eventually - chrollo x oc x feat. hisoka

» warnings: swearing, blood/violence, minor angst

» a/n: short chapter D:! edit: i’ve tried and tried but it just doesn’t flow right when i try to make this into an x reader:// HALF will be an oc fic and i’ve decided to cut the backstory here;( thanks for the love and support!

» word count: 2,494

☾ix. pt. ix: youth

3 months later

Loud, bass-bumping music and too many flashing lights fueled the exhilaration and excitement of one of the biggest night clubs in Yorknew City.

Sayomi had defeated her second opponent on the 200th floor with the help of Hisoka’s training earlier today, making this little outing a sad excuse for a celebration.

In reality, Hisoka just wanted to see whether Sayomi could dance or not.

He had insisted they go out and experience the nightlife the city had to offer, and with Sayomi still upbeat from her match, they found themselves sneaking into Octagon- a hip club located in the heart of Yorknew City.

Though technically Hisoka was 21 and therefore could have gone about this in an easier way, he insisted they sneak in ‘just for the fun of it’. The truth was that he’d been kicked out of the club previously after using his ‘magic tricks’ to make people’s arms disappear, but it made his intrusion all the more fun.

As Hisoka watched the floor from his spot at the bar with a drink held loosely in one hand, Sayomi was currently lost in a crowd of passionate clubbers, her violet eyes gleaming with the thrill of the environment.

The black and silver dress she wore highlighted her figure as well as electrifying eyes and hair, the metallic material dazzling under the club lights as she lost herself in the music and people.

She was letting herself go for the night like she often did on her chaotic trips to the city with Hisoka. Free from repressive parents or a fight for her life, Sayomi was at peace with her new life, expressing herself however she wanted to.

Draining the rest of his Cosmopolitan, Hisoka’s eyes shifted to the young assassin, his face remaining expressionless as he watched her draw a crowd with her alluring glow. 

He’d been staring so intensely he didn’t even notice a man take the seat next to him. The sound of the man’s voice established his presence, yet Hisoka’s line of sight ceased to drift from the girl with the bright silver hair.

“A stunner isn’t she?”

Hisoka blinked slowly, hardly registering the man’s words. A stunner indeed, but what more? “A pretty face doesn’t mean a pretty soul.”

The man laughed, setting his drink down on the bar to face Hisoka. “I take it she isn’t yours then? That’s a relief.”

Hisoka rested his chin in the palm of one of his finely manicured hands, his other tapping on the smooth surface of the bar impatiently. He couldn’t seem to figure out why his bloodlust was seeping through as he followed Sayomi with his eyes.

His? She could never belong to any man, she was her own person.

“Careful with your words there, I’d hate for them to be your last.” His words were venomous, filled with the intent to kill.

Hisoka’s nails had cut through the skin of his own cheek, his other hand clenched into a fist on the bar’s surface.

The man had shifted away from him, quietly taking his leave as he watched crimson seep down Hisoka’s pale fingers.

Over the past 3 months, he’d been able to fight her more than enough times, and now he no longer felt the same intoxicating feeling when he was with her. Sayomi never fought Hisoka to hurt him, only with the intentions of improving her own skills, which in turn left Hisoka aching for more.

However, as the days progressed he was slowly coming to the conclusion that the Zoldyck girl had an undeniable flaw. She doesn’t put up a fight when I’m with her.

He was losing interest in the girl who’d once swayed his unshakable feelings, and it distressed him that he almost felt bad for wanting to leave her behind.

His sharpened fingernails dug farther into the pale skin of his cheek as he watched Sayomi throw her slender arms around a man she’d only just met. 

She was laughing and smiling, her silky voice seeming to reach his ears through the music and cheers from where he sat. Loud and clear, the sound of her laughter rang through Hisoka’s head in an almost painful way.

She was becoming a weakness to the man who believed himself to be the strongest, and that didn’t sit right with him at all.

☾ix.

Sayomi wasn’t too sure of what exactly it was that she felt towards Hisoka.

When he took her to dinner with an amazing view or complimented her progress with training, she couldn’t tell whether it was her lack of social contact or actual feelings that led her heart to race when she saw his face.

It didn’t help that on some days she could notice the way his voice softened when he spoke to her, only to leave her heart stinging with his harsh words on other days.

He was taking mixed signals to the next level, playing with her feelings while he was trying to figure out his own.

It was selfish and cruel, falsely gaining the trust of someone who’d been through so much betrayal, all for his own entertainment.

But that was just who Hisoka was, he didn’t care for distractions or hindrances. And as fast as he’d first fallen for the young assassin, he was already in the process of making himself forget her.

He was moving on.

☾ix.

3 months later

It was the day after Sayomi’s 7th match on the 200th floor of Heaven’s Arena. She’d been scheduling her fights randomly, with no regard for who her opponents would be.

With 7 wins under her name, she only needed 3 more to challenge a floor master. 

However, with her longtime goal fast approaching, she wasn’t as happy as she thought she’d be.

It’d been about half a year since Sayomi had first met Hisoka, and all the excitement and jitters about spending time alone with a guy had died down. 

It’d also helped that for some reason Hisoka was rather occupied recently. He rarely took her out to the city, claiming he had other business to attend to, and when they did go out, he’d always turn in first mumbling that he was tired.

Sayomi was no fool, she knew that Hisoka was either losing interest in her as well or felt his job was almost through. To herself, she hoped that it was the former, for it would hurt less than to find out he’d only been around her for business purposes.

Regardless, Sayomi’s current situation was puzzling. She stood waiting for what seemed like forever in front of Hisoka’s room, ready to go out and train.

However, after knocking more than enough times and even calling his cell, there was no sign of her trainer. 

That’s odd.

Sayomi trained on her own that day, taking it upon herself to get strength training in at the gym.

It was the first time she’d spent an entire day without Hisoka since they’d started training. Deciding that he was out on his so-called ‘business’, Sayomi shrugged away his absence, going to sleep early for the first time in a while.

Yet, another day passed with no sign of the magician, and Sayomi began to grow concerned for his well-being. What if he was picked off by someone? No, he’s too strong to lose to anyone here… Did he pass out in his room?

Sayomi walked briskly to Hisoka’s room with a worried mind.

Once again there was no response to her knocking, and she decided she’d break into the room.

Using one of her longer needles, she picked the lock in no time, stepping into the unfamiliar room. 

It was empty. Only the faint smell of bubble gum and something sweet lingered in the abandoned room, the closet and space empty.

There was a note left on the cleanly made bed, the red ink standing out from the otherwise white sheets surrounding the note.

That lazy ass, of course he’d leave a note in his own room. 

Picking up the sheet, she read:

Zoldyck-

It’s about time you sneak into my room, I know you’ve thought about doing it before;) 

But jokes aside… 

I’m sorry, darling. 

It’s not like me to apologize(you can ask Kite)and that alone scared me, because I feel like you’ve changed me. Your smile and intoxicating eyes make me weak in the knees…

And I despise myself for it. 

I’m not sure why I’ve chosen to expose my faults to you, for that just makes you all the more dangerous to me.

But perhaps I want you to hold my weaknesses, and perhaps I’d like to see you come tear me apart. Yes, that must be it. 

I’ve departed Yorknew City to meet up with your twin brother, as it seems as though he’s been searching for you. And perhaps I should have taken him to you instead, but I’m not, because when the time is right I’d like you all to myself.

So don’t forgive me, Sayomi. Resent me, grow stronger, and when the time comes I’ll bring your brother back to you.

Ah, and there is one thing I’d always wanted to tell you… 

I always thought that you were most beautiful when you showed your true colors-

A cold-blooded, cold-hearted Zoldyck assassin with no regard for the pain and suffering of your victims.

Stop holding yourself back, people like us can be forgiven for our sins because of the hell we’ve been put through. 

-Hisoka 

☾ix.

A single tear rolled down Sayomi’s cheek. 

And that was all.

The flurry of sudden information rendered Sayomi breathless as she tried to make sense of his words.

This idiot really just admitted his feelings for me after all this time right when he decides to leave me here. Selfish bastard.

And he knows Illumi… but how? Illumi was looking for me? 

I have to become a floor master and get that clown to bring my brother back.

☾ix.

6 months later

Sayomi gazed out her window with a blank stare, 241 floors above the ground.

Just a week ago she’d claimed her spot on the 241st floor as the newest and youngest Floor Master at age 19.

She knew Hisoka would find out about her achievement soon, and all she could do now was wait.

Up until defeating and killing her last opponent, time had flown by easily. She was fueled by the goal of finding her brother and confronting Hisoka, but now that she was here, the loneliness began to sink in.

Kite and his student had taken off to another country in search of wildlife to study, leaving Sayomi all alone in Yorknew City.

She couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of her situation. Here she was at the top of the tallest building in Yorknew City, a place that others died trying to get to, yet she was unsatisfied.

Her face and name were plastered on billboards and posters all throughout the city, and citizens stood envious of the young teen’s life. She had enough money that she’d never have to work another day in her life, but in exchange she no longer had a family to accept her nor friends to laugh with.

Don’t feel sorry for yourself, there’s plenty of others that have it worse.

Sayomi sighed as she turned away from the window, grabbing her mask she’d started using as a floor master to attempt to conceal her identity. 

I won’t have challengers for another month or so… might as well hit the city.

☾ix.

Sayomi walked through the dark streets of Yorknew City, her hands clasped behind her head and her eyes vacant.

She didn’t have a destination in mind, just mindlessly strolling through the city covered with news of her promotion to Floor Master. There were citizens recognizing her as well, pointing and jumping back as if she were some monster.

Though she couldn’t blame them, as her nen happened to be on the disturbing side. The replays of her fights were mostly censored, deemed too inhumane for the public eye as they played on repeat on the sides of buildings,

She wasn’t too sure how far she’d walked, spotting Heaven’s Arena rather far in the distance behind her. The shops and glamorous hotels began to fade as she approached the run down parts of Yorknew City.

It was an abandoned lot of buildings, the ground littered with oil cans and shattered glass. In a way it was tranquil, free from angry drivers and the revolted gaze of commoners.

Walking through an opening in the wired fences that surrounded the lot, Sayomi wandered through a certain building that’d caught her eye.

She felt a faint aura coming from the abandoned office building, but oddly enough it wasn’t hostile or repelling. It was rather comforting.

Sayomi’s curiosity grew as the aura increased, drawing her towards the room located at the far end of the first floor.

She saw the man before she sensed him, his large coat catching her attention. His back was turned to her crouched down on the dusty floor, the windows adjacent to him shattered, letting the pale moonlight reflect off of his coat.

St. Peter’s cross. Interesting taste in fashion…

Another careless step closer and the man’s head turned abruptly in her direction. Sayomi had ducked behind a wall, but not fast enough.

The man stood from his spot, revealing a vibrant patch of violets by his feet. Upon his loss in concentration, the flowers wilted, withering back into the cluttered floor as if they’d never been there in the first place.

Sayomi could see the man’s face from where she crouched, hidden by a barely intact wall. Her heart skipped a beat upon meeting his eyes, deep gray and captivating as he easily identified her from her hiding spot.

It felt as if time was frozen in place, the young man staring intensely into Sayomi’s eyes as if he could read her mind. 

Sayomi was unmoving as well, having been caught examining his figure from behind the wall. He was by far the most appealing man she’d ever seen, his dark, raven hair slicked back to reveal a tattoo decorating the middle of his forehead, contrasting with his gentle eyes and youthful facial features. 

Handsome, she thought. 

The man took a slight step forward, snapping Sayomi out of his hypnotizing gaze as she sped off jumping through an empty window and out of the building. 

Though she was eager to know what he’d been doing with the flowers, his aura had changed when he’d noticed her watching. It had been dangerous and intense, a total opposite of his warm and placid one when dealing with the violets.

Her quick steps transitioned into a run, feeling the need to distance herself from the lingering intensity of the mysterious young man’s aura.

She ran back towards the towering building of Heaven’s Arena, not stopping her pace a bit until she was met with the familiar neon signs and billboards that surrounded the heart of Yorknew City.

Her dreams were taken over by the man’s captivating eyes that night. His familiar aura had seemed to beckon her to him, as if she’d known him for 100 years prior. 

But no matter how hard she thought that night, she couldn’t come up with an answer as to what he’d been doing with the violets conjured by his feet. 

In her dreams she saw her own eyes within the vibrant flowers, it was an abstract thought, though for a second she wondered if he had meant for her to see them. 

She quickly dismissed this, however, scoffing at the absurdity of her own thoughts. 

What am I, a child? I must be beyond lonely if I think some random guy has something to do with me.

Though deep down inside her heart, she wished it were true. To be fated to somebody, needed by somebody who she could trust with her darkest secrets and love.

☾ix.

to be continued.

[pocket-luv101]

Summary: After Kuro and Mahiru fight Sloth, they tend to their wounds. (KuroMahi)

Neither Kuro nor Mahiru spoke a word as he carefully applied a salve on the wound he received when he fought Sloth. He wrapped a bandage around his finger. He cradled his hand in his larger one and Mahiru could sense that he was holding back from his touch. They sat on the living room floor and he moved closer to Kuro until their knees bumped together. Mahiru wondered if Kuro would let him sit closer to him.

“I’ve gotten worse cuts while I was learning how to cook so you don’t need to fret over small wounds like this. Everyone teases me that I worry like a housewife or mother. If only they could see us now with the roles reversed.” Mahiru broke the silence with a joke to lighten the atmosphere. “When accidents happened in the past, I had to bandage them myself. It’s nice to have someone who can do this for me.”

“I was the one who caused these injuries. I’m sor—” Before he could apologize, Mahiru placed his hand on his cheek. He gently guided his eyes to meet his gaze and Kuro could see his thoughts behind his soft smile. He didn’t resent him for the fight. Mahiru was the most compassionate person he knew yet Kuro had to admit that he was worried his monstrous form would scare him.

“I don’t want to hear you say sorry. If there’s something you want to tell me, it should be a thank you.”

“You really like to boss this cat around, don’t you? Troublesome.” Kuro’s words were followed by a light chuckle and Mahiru knew it was merely a joke. Then, he whispered: “Thank you for saving me.”

He finished bandaging his fingers but he didn’t take his hand back. His touch lingered over his palm. At first glance, Mahiru’s fingers were long and slender but Kuro knew how strong they were. He had saved him countless times by simply holding out his hand to him. During the fight, Mahiru called his name and it broke through Sloth’s control. Kuro managed to stop Sloth long enough for Mahiru to pull the rose from his chest to claim his power. Unfortunately, taking the rose injured his hands slightly.

“Thanks for treating my wounds like a caring housewife.” Mahiru teased him with the nickname Kuro would often use for him. He did his best to act casual with him even as his heart was racing. Throughout their short time in London, it helped Mahiru realize the feelings he had for months. He loved Kuro. “Your fight with Sloth was mostly within your inner world but were you hurt? I’ll treat your wounds.”

“My body feels sore from the transformation but I’m pretty sure I don’t have any broken bones.” Kuro reassured him and he stretched his arms above his head to show him that he wasn’t hurt. The movement caused him to wince and Mahiru frowned at him. He took the first aid kit from him and he pulled out a few supplies. He didn’t know if the wound was a slash or something else. Hopefully, he wasn’t hurt badly and he could tend to it with a first aid kit.

“Take off your shirt so I can see where you’re hurt. You need to tell me if you’re injured, Kuro.” Mahiru could predict what he would say next and he stopped him by tenderly squeezing his hand. “Don’t brush it off because you’re a vampire and you heal quicker than me. I’m going to worry about you no matter what. This will go faster if you let me help you.”

“I’m sure it’s just a bruise.” Kuro didn’t expect Mahiru to close the space between them. He sat on his lap and they were close enough for their noses to brush together. Still, Mahiru leaned closer to him and he grabbed the buttons of his jacket. His brown hair brushed against Kuro’s skin as he did so. The light touch made his heart jump and he backed away to hide his blush.

With Mahiru on his lap, they inadvertently fell to the ground together with him sprawled on Kuro’s chest. He sat up and his first worry was that he had landed on his wound and agitated it further. Then their gaze met and he forgot everything but the red hue of his eyes. Kuro would often keep his emotions guarded behind a disinterested expression. Yet, there was something alluring in his eyes that held him spellbound.

Mahiru pushed himself up slightly and he looked down at Kuro. “It was painful for you to stretch your arms but you’re fine after I fell on you. Was it your arms that were hurt in the fight?”

Kuro didn’t answer him. He was certain he couldn’t tell him that he never felt hurt with him. He wasn’t hurt when he fell on him and he only thought of how he felt in his embrace. Mahiru had been the one to take away the pain of his guilt and so much more. Instead, he cupped Mahiru’s cheek in his hand and he ran his thumb over his smooth skin. He thought of how soft his hands also were as he bandaged him.

“What are you two doing on the floor?” Gear’s voice pulled them out of the moment and they jumped apart. He walked into the living room and he noticed the way they were blushing. Mahiru stood and he excused himself to make a bag of ice for Kuro’s bruise. He was careful not to meet either of their eyes as he left the room. He was scared they would be able to see his feelings for Kuro. He didn’t know if he felt the same so he thought it was best to wait until they defeated Tsubaki to confess to him.

He went into the kitchen and left Kuro and Gear alone. Kuro watched him walk away and he stared at the door even after he disappeared around the corner. He only looked away after he felt Gear lightly slap the ears of his coat. He gave him an irritated glare and said, “I thought you were resting after the battle, Gear. Did you come down just to bully this poor kitty?”

“How could anyone sleep with your two flirting on the floor beneath my bedroom?” Gear countered. Neither of them was offended by the other’s sarcastic tone because they had been friends for centuries. That time also allowed Gear to see the effect Mahiru had on his friend. “I heard you were worried about the thorn pricks on Mahiru’s hand. They’ll heal in a day or so. I brought something that could help him though.”

“Thanks.” He said as he placed a small jar next to him. “Humans are fragile.”

“It hurts to lose them so we have to protect them.” Gear nodded in agreement but he also added, “They’re strong too. You’ve changed since the last time we’ve spoken. You faced me and Sloth in the rose. Mahiru’s strength must’ve rubbed off on you. You should confess to him with that new courage you have.”

“I will.” Kuro whispered the vow to himself.

[robininthelabyrinth]

the nie sect is known for strong, angry sect leaders and strong, angry women; nie mingjue is just the first to be both. she refuses to let this burden fall on her little brother, who is far too young for it (he's barely old enough to understand that their father is dead, and still sucks his thumb at night)--she can swing a saber like the best of them, and, well... it's not like there are many nie elders to object anyway

also on ao3

The stories said that Nie Mingjue’s mother was a goddess.

They said she descended down from the mountains, crisp as a winter breeze and tall as a temple statute; they said Lao Nie fell in love with her the first moment he saw her and married her the next; they said that the heavens were jealous of their love and summoned her to return –

It was a little nicer than saying that Nie Mingjue’s mother was a rogue cultivator that lingered in Qinghe just long enough for a marriage ceremony and a baby before remembering that she preferred living alone.

Still, as Nie Mingjue grew up – and she did grow up, up and up and up – people started passing around the old story more and more. Lao Nie rolled his eyes but didn’t stop the rumors, which Nie Mingjue interpreted to mean that he thought they were useful somehow, though she never quite figured out the reasoning there. What difference did it make if she were the child of a goddess or a mortal woman?

Either way, she was still a girl.

Oh, Qinghe was famous for its indifference to such things: in Qinghe they don’t care if you’re a man or woman, the story went, as long as you can swing a saber, and it was even mostly true. No one would raise an eyebrow if you shared your bed with a man one night and a woman the next, no one cared if you said you were one for a week and the other for a month…

Still, for all of Qinghe’s indifference, the Nie sect had never had a female sect leader.

At least, not officially – there were a number of sect leader’s wives who were terrifying enough to have deserved the title – and officially was what mattered, in this case. The sect leader was the fulcrum on which the sect turned, the core of their fearsome cultivation: if water ran downhill, then evil flowed up, and the sect leader’s saber spirit was always by far the fiercest in the sect.

That was why Nie Mingjue’s ancestors died so much more quickly than her cousins – why she had plenty of great-uncles and great-aunts, and a family consisting of only her father, herself, and her younger brother.

“Do you not want me to be sect leader?” she asked her father once, because he had deliberately gone out and gotten himself a new wife to have a child with, showing great relief when it turned out to be a boy. “Is it something I’ve done, or haven’t done?”

“It’s not that,” her father had said at once, with such surety that her fears of inadequacy had been relieved. “It’s only – there are sacrifices that must be made, if the sect leader is a woman. A saber spirit powerful enough to support the sect cannot be allowed to escape.”

She hadn’t understood it at the time, being too young, but then she got a little older and started bleeding, and an old auntie came and told her why the bleeding mattered.

The sect leader’s saber was too strong, too fierce, too alive: full of resentful energy, almost like a ghost, hateful and vicious, and their bond with their master was too close. Normal swords could be used by anyone; only the powerful refused any hand but their masters – the powerful, and the Nie sabers.

A sect leader who was a woman could never have a child, lest that child’s soul be stolen away in the womb and replaced with something else.

“So I won’t have children,” Nie Mingjue said, when her father died before his time. “Easy enough.”

There were elders enough in her sect, those that had been lucky enough not to be part of the main clan line and to escape the burden of being sect leader; they looked at each other with concern.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t about to let them put the title of sect leader on Huaisang, then only a child of seven, not when there was her father to avenge, and so she reached up behind her back and brought Baxia down on the table in front of them, cleaving the old wooden table in half.

“I have the bloodline, and my saber’s strong enough to bear the strain,” she said while they stared: that table had survived more than a few of her father and grandfather’s strikes, only to yield to hers as if it were nothing. “If you want to protest, challenge me now.”

In the end, they didn’t.

And so she became sect leader.

The sacrifice of any future children turned out to be the easy part.

Jin Guangshan stared at her breasts whenever she sat across from him, and tried to stumble into her to take advantage of the fact that the top of his head only reached her chin; she made sure never to accept any invitation to ever be alone with him, especially when he was drunk. His wife glared at her as if it were her fault that her chest and hips had grown proportionate with the rest of her, giving her curves that were relatively rare among her countrymen.

Jiang Fengmian might have been all right, she supposed, if his wife hadn’t hated her nearly as much: Madame Yu had been childhood friends with Madame Jin, Nie Mingjue vaguely recalled, but she suspected the real reason was the Jiang sect’s inclination to keep women away from politics no matter how high their cultivation.

“How are you supposed to ‘attempt the impossible’ if you refuse to let half of your population even try?” she asked Jiang Fengmian once, and he just shook his head and tried to pat her head (she glared death at him until he retracted the offending limb before it could be chopped off), and said she wouldn’t understand, that Qinghe was too idiosyncratic, too indiscriminate, that other places were different.

(His daughter gave Nie Mingjue a flower after that meeting, blushing red to her ears, and followed it up with a bowl of soup, and to this day Nie Mingjue still didn’t know if it was because of what she’d said or if everyone in Yunmeng was just as indiscriminate as Qinghe and they just didn’t admit it to themselves.)

Even the ever-polite Lan sect wasn’t friendly.

The irritating part was that she was sure they would have gotten on well if she had been born a man, or at least presented as one, as she would have if she’d been a misaligned reincarnation; alas, she wasn’t, she was a woman, and the Lan sect rules dictated that men and women could not grow too close or intimate. Lan Qiren guarded his nephews against her as if they were treasures, and it took quite a while before she finally met Lan Xichen face to face.

“Wow,” he said, blinking at her. “They weren’t kidding when they said you were a goddess.”

“No, that’s my mother,” Nie Mingjue said automatically.

Lan Xichen smiled, his eyes turning into crescents. “No,” he said. “I’m sure I meant what I said.”

Nie Mingjue felt something jump in her chest, which had never happened before. But she had fought long and hard to be taken seriously as a sect leader despite her youth and her gender, and she wasn’t willing to give that up by falling, like every other female cultivator her age, for the man ranked first on the list of most attractive young masters.

(Nie Mingjue was ranked seventh. She’s not even sure how she got on the list, but apparently there were plenty of female cultivators who were happy to vote for her no matter her gender.)

Besides, even if her heart did beat a little faster whenever Lan Xichen smiled at her, and even if he indicated through some hints that he might be inclined to feel the same, it didn’t matter. She knew, even if he didn’t, that she wouldn’t bear children in this life – she loved Baxia dearly, she did, but her willful, vicious saber would make a terrible child – and she couldn’t impose that on anyone else.

Anyway, she’d figured out pretty quickly that Lan Xichen’s younger brother was a cutsleeve – whatever Lan Qiren might think, pornography was a perfectly reasonable gift for a teenager, especially given how successful Nie Huaisang’s side business was – and that meant Lan Xichen had to be the one to have descendants.

Nie Mingjue had heard all the stories about what happens when a man marries one woman who can’t give him children and another who can, and she wasn’t interested in that.

So they were friends.

She wasn’t sure if it got easier or harder when she met Meng Yao, who was small and delicate and scheming in a way that she found ridiculously endearing.

He wasn’t expecting her to be a woman, she thought: he’d set himself up on a mountain path, buckets of water at his side and a pitiful expression on his face as he chewed on hard bread without even taking a sip of the water right beside him to wet his throat, and when she’d stopped right in front of him to ask him about it he’d looked up at her and his eyes had gotten to be half the size of his face.

Nie Mingjue might’ve fallen for the gambit if it wasn’t for the way she could almost see the way he was rapidly reevaluating his entire strategy in real time – it almost made her nostalgic about listening to her cousins teach each other the warning signs of a white lotus seductress selling misery and purity.

Still, in the end it didn’t really matter if he was deliberately exaggerating his misery to sell it to her – the responsibility for good behavior was on the bully, not the victim, so she went and scolded the people inside the cave.

Afterwards, she took him out to walk with her.

“I’d already spoken with some people about you; it seems like you’ve established your merits in the battlefield and off,” she told him. “You don’t also need to be pitiful to get my attention.”

Meng Yao smiled self-depreciatingly. “I find that men have a soft spot for people they think need them.”

“Well, I’m not a man, am I?” she pointed out in return. She thought about it for a moment, then decided, as always, to be blunt. “I might spend most of my time now with men, but I spent my childhood with women; a woman’s tricks don’t work that well on me. What is it that you want?”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Do you want to be my deputy? I’m willing, since you seem competent enough,” she said. “But if your goal is to get back into your father’s good graces by reporting on me, don’t bother. He has spies enough for that – he doesn’t need a son to do it.”

“Perhaps I just want to show him what I’m capable of,” Meng Yao said.

Nie Mingjue laughed. “At my side? If you’d like to try, I’m not going to stop you, but I’ll tell you now that the merits that Jin Guangshan values may not be to your taste.”

She made him her deputy, and he lived up to her expectations – he was efficient, capable, competent. He was good at understanding people, which she wasn’t, and he could figure out within moments what any given person wanted.  Just as importantly, he lived up to the principles she prized, valuing the lives of the common folk as well as Nie cultivators; he did what she asked of him, and he did it well.

It would be a shame to lose him, she thought, but she still brought him with her to a wartime meeting with the Jin sect.

Afterwards, she made her excuses to leave early, as she always did, and when Meng Yao showed up later that evening to drop off the usual round of spies’ reports, Nie Mingjue could smell blood from where his nails had pierced his palms.

“He asked you if you were fucking me,” she said, accepting the papers. It wasn’t a guess. “You can tell him that you are, if you think it would help your standing with him.”

Meng Yao seemed repulsed by her suggestion, which amused her.

“Don’t you mind that half the camp thinks I got my position by climbing into your bed?” he asked her, a wrinkle in his brow suggesting that the question mattered to him. “Most of them can’t decide if I’m your boy-toy or merely stupid enough not to notice that I’m deliberately seducing you for my own ends, but either way the implication is highly unflattering. Don’t you care?”

“…not really?” Nie Mingjue said. “I’ve been sect leader since I was fifteen and more than half the sect leaders that currently report to me have been treating me like I’m a walking collection of fuckable female body parts since then; they get extremely irritable any time I open my mouth and remind them I’m not. Keeping a boy-toy is positively tame compared to the rest of it…you must have heard the one that says that I’m a frigid bitch that can only be satisfied by fucking my saber? That one’s a perennial.”

Meng Yao’s expression suggested he had, in fact, heard that one.

“My father always told me that the more people talk behind your back, the harder you have to work to leave them with nothing to say,” Nie Mingjue continued. “But I’ve found that they’ll find something to say, and if there isn’t anything, they’ll make something up. There’s no way to stop gossip.”

Meng Yao was frowning. “That seems unduly pessimistic. Not to borrow our enemies’ words, but if you shine like a sun in the heavens –”

“I’m the sect leader of one of the Great Sects,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m a war hero. I have a reputation as a upright and righteous person. And yet between me and Wen Ruohan, who’s to say whose name is dragged through the mud more? They curse at him as the man who ordered the rape of their wives in one breath and talk eagerly about how much they’d like to rape me the next…Meng Yao, don’t take insult when I say this, but you could be as wise as a sage, as powerful as a landslide, as beneficent as a buddha and they’d still ask each other behind their sleeves what you learned from being a whore’s son.”

His expression was rather ugly – nothing at all like his usual calm smile.

“I usually get over it by associating myself with better people,” she added. “Have you met Lan Xichen yet?”

It turned out he had, and that they were rather fond of each other, too. Very fond, to judge by Meng Yao’s starry-eyed expression, and wouldn’t it be just her luck if the two men she was attracted to – and which she’d refused on the basis of not wanting to cut off their family lines – ended up pairing up together, which would also cut off their family lines?

Of course, Meng Yao was off limits for other reasons as well…

One day she overheard them talking about Meng Yao possibly leaving, probably intentionally on Meng Yao’s part, and she walked inside rolling her eyes already. “If you want to go, go,” she said. “I’ll write you a recommendation letter, for whatever it’s worth – he’s got a thick enough face that it might not do you any good, but he’s already noticed you, so hopefully that’ll be something.”

“Sect Leader Nie –”

“I didn’t promote you out of a sense of gratitude,” she said impatiently. “You’ve always wanted to get back to him, for whatever reason; I’m not going to hold you back.”

He smiled at that, and Lan Xichen smiled with him.

Really, there were limits to the sort of things you could expect a person to resist, even with willpower like hers.

“Have you decided that you will go?” she asked Meng Yao. “Is it your final decision? Let me know now.”

“It is.”

“Good,” she said. “You’re fired as my deputy. Also, I’d like to take the two of you to bed, if you’re similarly inclined.”

They gaped at her.

“What?” she said, crossing her arms. “He’s not my deputy anymore, there’s nothing immoral about it. Besides, nobody will get any stupid ideas about marriage if there’s three of us involved. It is only if you’re interested, though; I won’t be offended if you say no –”

Lan Xichen was kissing her before she even finished the sentence, so she assumed the answer was not, in fact, no, and Meng Yao’s reaction was equally enthusiastic – though perhaps equally wasn’t the right word, given how both she and Meng Yao ended up tied up in Lan Xichen’s forehead ribbon before the night was done.

“I knew it was a kink,” Meng Yao said, inspecting it with an expression of satisfaction, as if he hadn’t just demonstrated a fair share of his own. “Something so prominently displayed, Xichen-gege, for shame…”

Lan Xichen didn’t show so much as a hint of shame about it. “We’ll have to do this again,” he said. “I’m not even a fourth of the way down my list.”

“There’s a list?” Nie Mingjue asked, stretching out her legs to see how they felt after all that tossing around. “Tell me this is written down somewhere – no, tell me your uncle found it.”

Lan Xichen shuddered. “Thank you, da-jie. I didn’t need that mental image – it’d be like the time you gave Wangji pornography, only worse.”

Meng Yao decided the best way to muffle his laughter was in Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. With his teeth.

Nie Mingjue gave him a half-hearted shove. “Get off,” she grumbled. “I need to go drink some medicine to prevent contraception before we encounter disaster – this wasn’t planned, you know. I was intending on dying a virgin.”

“Da-jie, for you to die a virgin, that would mean – uh – that would – you were…? Mingjue!”

Nie Mingjue gave them both a glare. “Don’t tell me you two listened to those stupid rumors. I don’t take just anyone to my bed.”

“And you decided on two of us?” Meng Yao said, blinking at her. “Da-jie is very ambitious.”

“Not as much as you,” she said, rolling her eyes and pushing away their grasping hands. “What’s your real plan, anyway? You know Jin Guangshan won’t accept you as a son just because you show up and volunteer.”

“I don’t need to be his son, I just need to wear his colors,” Meng Yao said. “It’ll make for a better story when I defect to the Wen sect – as a spy, don’t look at me like that. You know I’d be good at it. And if I get close enough to Wen Ruohan, I can kill him. I’ll give you his head as a present, da-jie.”

“Unfair, A-Yao! I can’t compete with that,” Lan Xichen complained. “You have to let me help.”

‘Help’ turned out to be Lan Xichen allowing himself to be captured and Meng Yao stabbing Wen Ruohan in the back when he was about to start torturing the First Jade of Lan – Nie Mingjue had a headache and a strong desire to kill them both.

Even if they did bring her Wen Ruohan’s head.

“Stop looking so pleased with yourselves,” she scolded them – both Lan Xichen and Meng Yao, now officially Jin Guangyao (thanks to a bit of pointed haggling over which clan got what war merits and how that applied to the division of the spoils of war), looked positively smug. “What if you’d died?”

“But we didn’t,” Lan Xichen pointed out. “And now we’re here to claim our reward from our goddess.”

“Did I promise you a reward?”

Two sets of puppy dog eyes…and they did help her avenge her father.

“Fine. What do you want? If I can give it to you, it’s yours.”

They looked at each other, and Nie Mingjue immediately started to worry: they’d had time to think about it. That was dangerous.

“We want to marry you,” Lan Xichen said.

“Both of us,” Jin Guangyao said. “To avoid any jealousy.”

“That’s…not how that works,” Nie Mingjue said blankly. Men married multiple wives, not women multiple men: they had words for women who did that, none of them complimentary. Or legal, for that matter. “And anyway, I’ve already told you, I can’t have children. Huaisang’s my heir, and he always will be – you deserve to continue your family lines. Both of you.”

They exchanged looks again.

“That’s fine by me,” Jin Guangyao said. “Jin Zixuan’s the heir anyway.”

“I have plenty of cousins,” Lan Xichen said. “Can we go to bed now? I was injured in the line of duty –” He had a scraped knee and exactly three bruises, she’d counted. “– and I need some care and attention.”

“And an agreement of marriage from da-jie,” Jin Guangyao said, because he had a lawyer’s eye for such things.

This was almost certain to cause some sort of political disaster.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t settle for sworn brothers or something?” she tried.

They wouldn’t.

(The stories said that the leader of the Nie sect was a goddess – a war goddess, a goddess of the blade, sharp as the saber she carried and tall as a temple statute; they said that her two lovers fell in love with her the first moment they saw her and fought a war that upturned the entire cultivation world just to win the right to claim her hand; they said that they served as her right and left hands, and that when the three of them were together, the venerated triad, they could never be defeated.)

[demonologist-in-denim]

One of the Boys!Crowley

After Crowley closes the Gates and joins the Winchesters permanently, no one – not even Crowley himself – knows if he’ll ever complete the cure. He’s “cured” from the demon trials years ago in the sense that the scaring on his soul from his time on the rack and in service to Hell has healed or receded. He is no longer numb to the joy and suffering of others, his own emotions are no longer muted or twisted by his demonic essence. He is reformed in the sense that while he is still a demon, his actions and choices – if not his words – reflect his rising humanity rather than his lingering demonic impulses.

And as the years pass, the longer Hell remains closed, the more his powers diminish. Sometimes, he misses his once-limitless capacity: near-invincibility, conditional immortality, the ability to reshape the world with a snap of his fingers. But there is also something solid and more present, something of worth, in the limited and the temporary. Something beautiful and fragile and beyond value in impermanence. What he does now matters, more than it ever mattered before, because now he has to actually try, and sometimes fail. And when he succeeds, it is because of what Crowley is capable of, rather than the seductive ease of powers and abilities granted him by Hell. His cunning, his intelligence, his will. His own inherent, innate worth. Because he is worthy – of respect, and of love, without the threat or authority of Hell behind him.

Being at least equal portions human and demon doesn’t mean Crowley is vulnerable. If there is one thing Crowley rarely is, rarely allows himself to be, it is vulnerable. Too many centuries and a human life preceding that of vulnerable meaning weak, being used, abused, discarded. Too great an instinct for self-preservation, too much fear of rejection. Too much self-hatred directed at himself for both an unearned feeling of worthlessness and a painful awareness of the sins he’s committed against the world. But there is also a strong desire to be understood, to ignite that spark between himself and others, to feel that connection and sense of belonging. And so occasionally, mostly with Dean, Crowley allows himself to be just that little bit vulnerable, and hope the hunter sees him for who he is, as much as for the better man Crowley wishes he were capable of becoming.

He’s still an arse. He can still be a little too caustic, a little too inconsiderate, and he doesn’t really care if that ruffles some feathers the wrong way. Crowley wouldn’t be himself without his infamous snark and charm, and he never wants to not be himself – just a (slightly) better version of that. He still calls the boys Moose and Squirrel and Feathers, affectionately. Still reserves their names for more tender moments. Still points out all the ways their plans to save the day or the world are stupid, or ill-planned, or self-serving, or likely to jumpstart another apocalypse. Concealing vulnerability and fear of rejection and insecurity about his increasing humanity. He still thinks the Winchesters and Castiel and all their extended family and friends are complete and utter morons, risking their lives for a world that couldn’t care less about them.

None of that means Crowley doesn’t care. Crowley cares, in his opinion, a little too much – he loves, more than he is willing to lose or suffer for that love. He loves with a desperate, dismissive love that takes the shape of exasperated indulgence and affectionate eye rolls, overlooked administrative tasks expertly handled, inserted leaflets into lore and spell books with handwritten corrections, subtle and other times hostile mother-henning, well-mean manipulations and homemade meals. He’s never vocal about his affection, never utters the word love, never says thank you, never dares to say “I’m sorry”. Because he fears saying sorry would show just how small, how insignificant those acts of love were, compared to other, darker acts committed.

Sometimes, Crowley wishes he couldn’t feel the regret and the guilt, the shame that occasionally tempts him to drown himself in good scotch. It’s always there, a dull ache in his second-hand heart. Attempts to justify or rationalize the past as a means of survival, as what brought him here, pale in comparison to the memories of his victims, their screams, the sting of their deserved accusations, the discomfort of their undeserved forgiveness. Things Crowley cannot take back. Things that haunt him. That he’s had to learn how to face, to take responsibility for, to give him the strength and resilience to carry on down this road of redemption. His own past something he can mine and use to help others, guide and protect – save others. No one came for him. No angel fought their way through Hell on divine orders to save Crowley. He was damned, and damaged, and some parts of himself are forever beyond repair. But he can take that damage and do good with it. In his more noble, slightly inebriated moments, Crowley tells himself that’s all there is to it, being this better version of himself. Just wanting to do some good. It has nothing to do with the nightmares and the hellhounds that hunt him from the recesses of his own mind. Or earning the affection of the people he has come to consider family – that have, foolishly, come to consider him family.

Crowley is still Crowley. He is resentful and reluctant, indifferent and dismissive. He’s broken, resigned to being broken, to being a shade too grey to ever be one of the good guys. He’s world-weary and worn, half a soul weaving him threadbare. And Crowley is, ultimately, resilient. He is resolved against his better judgement to give this world – and himself – one last chance. He’s one of the boys, the fourth core member of Team Free Will. And there's work to be done.

[senjuushi]

Translation: Cutlery’s Fantastic X-Mas

Another translation in very good time! o3o Despite being eleven pages long, I got this done pretty quickly, somehow? It’s hilarious. Nothing like Hokusai shaking a bomb in 89′s face because he doesn’t realize that most other people do care if they die. XD Also, 89′s crush on Mikhael (and tendency to form crushes, in general), is the cutest thing. I love his brief moment of hope... 

Also, Cutlery and Kunitomo are two of the Antiques. Don’t mind them. 

Episode 2: Strategy on the Eve of Christmas Eve

89: Ugh, it’s cold... I seriously can’t do missions on days like this.

Hokusai: For someone so weak to the cold... Ta-da! A present made special by me, hot-hot bomb number three!

89: The fuck is that blue thing? A tennis ball?

Hokusai: Nein! It contains a particular chemical developed by me~

Hokusai: Just rattle it around, give it a shake, and... amazing~! In the blink of an eye, it gets piping hot! And just like that, I’m nice and warm!

Hokusai: Since it’s still in the prototype phase, every so often, the chemical reaction will increase to an excessive degree, and it’ll explode~ Ahahaha!

89: Damn it, don’t laugh... Tell me that part from the beginning...

. . .

Soldier A: ...hm? Hey, is there no one over that way?

Soldier B: A resident? ...no, can’t be. There aren’t any people left in the ruins of a town like this.

Soldier A: ...ah! He’s escaping! Hold it right there!!

Soldier B: Here he is! This way!

Cutlery: Hah... these guys are persistent. This is bad, but I can’t let myself cause trouble for everyone again—!

Soldier A & B: Aaaah...!

. . .

89: ...hey, what the hell’s that noise?

Soldier A: W-We pursued a... suspicious individual... and... he fought back...

Soldier A: ...th-the enemy has a small-sized gun... A knife...

Hokusai: Uh-oh~ Did he just die?

89: He passed out, that’s all. Anyway, are we supposed to chase that other guy?

Hokusai: Yep, yep, roger~!

89: A small-sized gun... and a knife, huh? I feel like I heard something about that recently...

...maybe I imagined it.

Episode 5: Turn-Around Victory

89: Tch... The snow is so intense, I can hardly follow the footprints in it. This fucking cold shit’s such a pain...

Hokusai: Well, it’s useless to just wander around. I wanna go home and get back to my experiment... and give it another try!

89: Agreed. Let’s hurry up and go home.

Hokusai: ...oh? It looks awfully crowded over there, huh? 89-kun, before we go home, let’s go have a look~!

Hokusai: Woah! So cool! But it for sure loses points for all that red. Prussian blue is best, after all!

89: ...that’s right. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve...

Hokusai: Oh, what’s this~? What’s the matter, 89-kun?

89: Nothing at all.

89: ...ah!

Woman: Aah! I’m so sorry! You’re not hurt, are you?

89: N-No... That much isn’t gonna—

Man: Whoah there! Are you okay, my sweetheart? Here, hold onto my arm. Don’t fall again, alright?

Woman: Hehe, thank you. I love you, darling. ♡

89: ...........

89: Damn it... I hate Christmas bringing out all this gross, sappy shit...! Normies should all go die...! Normie guns too...!

Mikhael: Such a resentful voice right before the holy night... such a lack of peace.

Hokusai: What’s this!? Mikhael-kun! Quite the coincidence to meet you here. What’cha doing?

Mikhael: I came here to decide on Christmas ornaments. Ones to offer to our Master for the upcoming piano reception.

Mikhael: If the venue has an enchanting atmosphere, won’t the guests enjoy it even more?

89: Huh... You’re doing something real refined there, I guess.

Mikhael: Yes, precisely... And these are written invitations for you two. Here you are, 89. Hokusai.

89: Wha...! I-Is that really okay!? Wow, this is insane... A Christmas piano concert....!

Hokusai: Mikhael-kun’s piano, hm? It’s been quite a while since I last heard it, so I’m sure this’ll be fun~

89: ...’kay! For the sake of tomorrow, let’s hurry up and catch this guy who escaped!

Hokusai: Oh, you’re suddenly motivated, aren’t you? Well, we can have a good look around here too. Let’s go~!

Episode 8: A Meeting in the Same Town?

Mikhael: A rose ornament the color of blood in the midst of a pure white mall.

Mikhael: ...yes. This one appears to be quite high-quality. May I have it?

Kunitomo: Of course. Thank you for your business!

Soldier A: Here’s the payment. Please, pack everything up quickly.

Kunitomo: Thank you very much for your payment. I’ll have all of your purchases loaded onto this truck right away~!

Hokusai: Hey, Mikhael-kun. What sort of song are you going to play at the reception?

Mikhael: A requested one, composed by Bach. It’s a classic song for Christmastime.

89: Haah, this is useless. We’ll never find him. Anyway, couldn’t he have just frozen to death in the cold already?

89: ...that’s a believable story. Anyone wanna say that’s what happened?

Hokusai: What’s this, are you giving up now, 89-kun?

89: Yeah. ...fuck, I can’t keep doing this. Everywhere I look, all of these disgusting couples are ogling each other...

89: Thanks to that, my life points are dropping...

...huh?

Kunitomo: Welcome in~ Are you looking for something, in particular?

89: You... Are you Japanese? That’s pretty rare here.

Kunitomo: H-Haha, that’s what I’m told~

89: Do you live here? Or what—

Mikhael: 89? The shopping is taken care of. We were about to return to the castle, but... You two are still lingering here?

89: Oh... Wait a s-sec, I’ll be right back...!

Kunitomo: ..........

Kunitomo: Th-Th-That gas mask... Could he have been one of the Modern gun Musketeers!?

Kunitomo: Aaaah, he didn’t realize I’m a Musketeer too, right? Haah~ That was so scary...

[mooswords]

It’s all coming back

Pairing: semi eita x reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Tags: war au, minor character death (mentioned), angst

Ramblings: i think ive peaked with this fic. i also cried multiple times writing this but like... thats nothing new sklajsdbk. thank you to lyra for beta-ing and yelling about this with me every step of the way <3

---

The summer breeze sweeps through the valley, warm air bringing little relief from the afternoon sun. You can feel the sweat dripping in familiar discomfort down your back as you pull at the weeds invading your struggling potato crop. It’s mind-numbing work, but it has to be done. Anyway, you’re almost-

Your name is yelled, loud and panicked. Tsutomu’s stumbling form is running towards you. 

“There’s a man,” he pants. “There’s a man coming up the hill.”

“Is it Tadashi?”

“I don’t think it’s him. He-” Tsutomu throws a look over his shoulder, like he can see through the house and fences to remind himself what this man looks like. “He’s got a sword I think.”

“A soldier?” you breathe, the stone in your stomach dropping lower. Your shoulder aches. It’s still healing, a lingering reminder that soldiers are nothing but bad news. It’s been nearly a year since the war ended, but they like to ignore that fact. 

Through the summer haze, you can see a blurry figure trudging up the road winding up to the house. Even at this distance, you can tell it’s definitely not Tadashi.

“Kei and Hikota are further out," you tell him, eyes still set on the figure. "Go find them and stay in the barn together until I come and get you, OK?”

“But-”

“Tsutomu. Go.”

The mystery figure is nearly at the house by the time you make it out the front door, shotgun in hand. Now you're closer you can see the ash-grey hair, the sword swinging at his hip. At this distance, you can also see the nervous smile on his face. Reluctantly, you lean the shotgun against the door jam.

He stops a few respectful paces away, and you let your eyes flit over him scornfully. “You’ve got guts, showing up here again.”

Semi winces. He knew not to expect a warm welcome, especially with how he left, but he hadn’t expected this. You don’t look the same as he remembers - more worn, more beaten down by the ebb and flow of life than he had hoped. There is a new assertiveness that you wear, still a few sizes too big for you to fill out properly but nonetheless folding strong and confident across your shoulders. It speaks to many years alone, being forced to grow up too quickly. 

He supposes that’s partially his fault though.

“What do you want?” you ask, chin tilted up. Defiant as always. He’s glad that hasn’t changed.

“I’m… the war’s over. I came home.”

“Home?” You sound incredulous, a mocking edge to your voice.

“Yes,” Semi says, uncertainty beginning to cloud his words. “To you.”

You scoff. It seems the years have gifted you with a certain bitterness; he can not fault you for it, but it still grates at his rose-tinted memories. You were never a particularly joyful child - joy wasn’t a luxury people like you and he could afford - but there was a hope he remembered, a desperate spark that you’d imbue into the stories you’d tell the younger kids. The woman in front of him today deals only in blunt, unsavoury realities.

“Home to me,” you repeat, nodding slowly. Your tone is less than impressed. “Tell me-” you cock your head, contempt in every move, “since when do you leave your home without even a goodbye?”

You can see the confusion in the furrow of his brow. How could he not know? 

“I’m sorry, I-” he shifts, looking less like a war-hardened soldier and more like the lanky 17-year-old you knew all those years ago. “I wasn't brave enough.”

“And yet you were brave enough to go fight in a war that's stretched on for years.” You bite your tongue, frustration welling up because you want to hug him forever but you also can’t let yourself slip up. He’s a soldier. He left. You have the younger kids to think about too, and you aren’t going to let him come in and destroy this family you have fought tooth and nail for. 

“You seem like you’re doing OK now.”

“Yeah, now,” you bite back. “I’m doing OK now because I survived long enough to get out of the city walls. Barely. You can’t just waltz back in here like you never left.”

“I had to go, they needed me.”

“They needed you?! What about Tsutomu?” 

He looks sheepish at that. Maybe you're finally getting through to him.

“He had you?” he tries.

Then again, how could he know? He may have seen horrors fighting for six long years, but Semi left before the city really began to fall apart. You have survived your own nightmares. Humanity is capable of more atrocities than just war. 

“Of course he had me, I wasn't going to abandon him after his own brother did.” It's a low blow, but you can't find it in yourself to care. “But that doesn’t erase the fact I was one girl! I was struggling to feed my own siblings let alone yours! Do you think young girls can find work in the city? Do you think I could protect all of the kids?” 

You’re shaking now, animated in your fury, and the words are pouring out faster and more uncontrolled than you had imagined. You have had six years to think of what you would say to Semi if he ever came home, but right now you can't remember a word of the carefully scathing speeches you had drafted in those long nights. This is far less elegant, nothing more than the messy sum of repressed emotions and long-forgotten promises.

“You left! When I needed you! You left me alone, just to-” you angrily smear your tears, jaw clenching, “-to go fight in some stupid war they already had thousands of men to fight.”

“You had the others, and I couldn’t just-”

The door behind you creaks.

“Go back to your siblings, Kei,” you say, not turning.

Semi’s eyes are pulled to the proud arch of a young boy’s head. For someone with dirt smeared across his cheek and a sun-bleached shirt, the kid holds himself with something akin to royal grace. Semi would be impressed if he didn’t recognise the faux bravado as the carefully cultivated shield it is. He used to wear the same brand of armour.

“You sure?” the boy asks, a well-worn aloofness in his tone that that shouldn’t belong to someone still so young. If life hasn’t been kind to you, it has been rougher for this kid.

“I’m sure.” You turn, finally, and Semi catches the edge of your smile. He wonders if it still pulls higher on one side like it used to. He wonders if you still remember that secret handshake you made him learn all those years ago, if you still love the sunflowers that used to grow in the upper circles of the city, if you still get that faraway look in your eye when you get lost in the labyrinth of your own mind.

It’s jarring, Semi thinks as he watches the final nasty look thrown his way before the boy disappears back into the doorway. The image these memories paint is so out of sync with the woman he sees before him now, and no amount of reminiscing will bring them back together.

“So… who’s he?”

Impassiveness slides back over your face, the momentary softness slipping out of sight. “His family has also been torn away by this war. We stick together because we have no one else. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Come on, please,” Semi starts. This is not how he expected this reunion to go. He takes a tentative step forward. “I know you’re angry, but I truly never meant to hurt you. I just wanted to keep you and the kids safe.”

You don’t shake off his careful hand on your shoulder; you’re not sure you could. The fight is draining from your body, and as the anger recedes, you start to see him come into focus. The dusty bandage wrapped around his hand, the lines running deep around his eyes. Maybe you had survived your own nightmares, but you were a fool to think that made his any lighter.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pressing closer. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen to you, but I’d do it again. I’m sorry I had to leave you and the kids, but I don’t regret going to fight.”

“And I don’t hate you for wanting to fight,” you relent, finally meeting his eyes. They’re sadder now, yet he can’t help feel relieved that the animosity has drained away. 

You shrug, pained smile stuck awkwardly on your face. “But you still left us.”

Somehow, the lack of anger makes your words cut deeper. They have lost their accusing edge, replaced with a blunt resignation that makes his heartache. There’s resentment rallying in his stomach against your disappointment, and it mixes unpleasantly with the hope he had walked up to you with. 

“I said I’m sorry, didn’t I?” He can hear the annoyance leaking through, and from the line of tension that returns to your shoulders, so do you.

There’s a long moment, full of memories and chances long lost to history, where all you can feel is the inevitable beginnings of a new battle. The lamentable reality is that you were never taught how to back down from a challenge; to do so would just send you reeling back down to the bottom of the hard-won steps you had already taken. But haven’t you fought enough? Haven’t you fought your past enough, must you now fight him too? 

“You can say sorry all you like, it doesn’t change the past.” Your voice comes out more resigned, less annoyed than you had wanted. 

“Why are you so set on the past?” he demands, frustration tearing through the thin blanket of peace that had settled. “I’m here now, trying to make amends and you-”

“I don’t care what’s happening now, I want answers for what happened back then! Why didn’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trusted you, I- I just…” he throws his hands up, pacing a few steps away. “It was something I needed to do. Talking to you wasn’t going to change that.”

“Oh, so I didn’t matter then?” you say, lips pressed together painfully. It’s a wet anger; blurry eyes and choked voice. You had stared down more fearsome men than Semi Eita without a tremble, but his long-forgotten familiarity somehow makes this so much harder. “My opinion didn’t matter, my life didn’t-”

“Don’t be stupid, of course you mattered! Why do you think I left, huh? You and Tsutomu matter more than anything else-”

“Well that’s not what it seemed like to me and Tsutomu!” you yell back, sick to your stomach. “One day you were here, and the next you were gone! No warning, no nothing! Tsutomu was ten, Semi. TEN.” 

He hadn’t been there to see the pieces of your life shatter apart, to see Tsutomu look so confused, to hear him ask, so quiet and ashamed, if it was his fault his brother left. He hadn’t been there to see you patch your family back together with tape you couldn’t even afford and promises you literally bled to uphold.

“I was fighting to protect you-”

“You left us for dead.”

“You would be dead if they had reached the city! What was I supposed to do? Sit back and let others die for me while I did nothing?”

You huff, dragging a hand over your eyes. Your shoulder aches. “So you thought the military needed one extra person? One extra body, that’s all it took to win the war?”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he groans.

“Do I?” you fire back, leaning forward into his personal space. “Do I know? Because I was of the understanding we were a team, and then you left without a word!”

He can tell from your face you are just as frustrated at this conversation going in circles as he is. And he knows you have a point - he did leave without saying anything, and it’s a guilt that still weighs on him. But in his core, he knows he is right too. Why shouldn’t he want to defend his home? Why shouldn’t he have gone? 

“I did what I had to protect you and the kids.” His voice drops into a low anger that holds more fury than any scream could. “I’m not going to apologise for wanting to protect what I love, no matter if you appreciate it or not.”

Your eyes dart between his, narrowed and searching. There’s definitely more underlying those words, years of unspoken almosts that had to be forgotten. Even just saying that much dredges up old memories he thought long gone, lost to time and unfortunate circumstance. 

“I’d appreciate not being left alone to feed-”

“Stop being dramatic, you weren’t alone. The kids are smart, and W-”

“They were literally kids!" you flare, tongue cutting with scorn sharper than any blade he's faced. "What, you wanted me to let Yachi go work in the factories? Let Tsutomu go fight in the pits? We both know that would have been a death sentence.”

“You had Wakatoshi, and-”

“Wakatoshi died!” 

Semi has been stabbed before. It’s a strange sensation; if there’s enough adrenalin flooding your veins, it almost feels like nothing more than a poke. But slowly, a creeping realization will set in as the wetness of your shirt becomes too much to ignore and your eyes are drawn irrevocably down. It’s only then the pain will hit you.

This doesn’t feel like that. This is immediate pain, your words splattering sharp and bright across his chest. He stutters back a step, breaths coming in short and shallow bursts.

“What… who...”

Your lips are pressed together, face turned away from him. The breath you pull in is shaky, and when you meet his eyes, they’re apologetic and guilty.

“The… the town guard caught Tsutomu trying to pocket medicine for me, and they were going to take him but Wakatoshi stepped in and it all happened so fast I…” a breathy sigh escapes you, right on the cusp of a sob. “I’m so sorry Eita, I didn’t mean to tell you like that.”

“It’s-”

It’s not OK. Wakatoshi has been a reliable fixture in Semi’s life for years, unshakable through everything. His certainty was something Semi had always admired. And despite his severity, there was a gentleness to his composure - lifting the kids up onto his shoulders during the rare parades or quietly teaching them how to play knucklebones. It’s unthinkable, for Semi to have survived this war but Wakatoshi to not.

“I’m OK,” he says. 

The quiet hand you lay on his arm doesn’t help, only serving to remind him that you lost Wakatoshi too. And maybe he lost you a long time ago too. Just one more thing to add to the never-ending list of all he’s lost to this war.

Semi can only laugh, a bitter, broken sound that echoes in his own ears. It’s an ugly thing; to fight and bleed and sacrifice for a country that has never done anything for you, only to come home and be slapped with everything else that’s slipped away in the process. Of course his selflessness would be repaid in frayed relationships and lost friends.

“I’m OK,” he repeats, because he needs it to be true this time.

“Are you?” you ask, concern slipping in under the blunt question. He wants to laugh again. You always have asked the hard questions. 

Your hand slides up to cup his cheek, palm rough but touch gentle against his skin, and he leans into it rather than answer. With his eyes closed, for just this moment, he can almost believe reality isn’t quite as bleak as it actually is. 

When he opens them your head is tilted, looking up at him with exhausted but understanding eyes. Sighing, your head falls forward to knock against his chest. You shoulders slump, and he slowly reaches around to grasp the back of your shirt. It’s still messy between you, and he knows this is only the beginning of a long road back to the trust you shared before. 

Yet as your arms come up to wrap around him too, he thinks maybe there’s hope for him. 

“I missed you,” you whisper into his shirt.

Maybe even hope for you and him. It might not ever be the same, but that is a battle to be faced later. 

For now, he finally lets the tears come. For Wakatoshi. For everything he went through, for everything he put you and Tsutomu through. For the simple relief of not having to fight anymore.

He feels your arms tighten around his waist. 

“It’s OK,” you tell him, and he thinks, someday, he might just believe you.

[schrijverr]

Lay Your Burdens Down

An introspection of Boromir’s mind during the quest. How he was fulfilling a role that was not written for him and how it became his downfall.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: Boromir's relation with the Ring

~~~~~~~~~

Boromir carried burdens he was not meant to carry.

He had traveled far, aching bones and dirty hands to ask for counsel that might not be enough to save Gondor. His beautiful Gondor for which he would give his life, if it meant that the White City should prevail.

It was a feeble hope, but it was the only hope he had. For all other hope had long forsaken Minas Tirith as it lay in the Mountain’s shadow under ever growing darkness.

His father could not hold out for long. Soon the people of Gondor’s doubt, their questions if he knew what he was doing, if he was doing enough to save their land, would lead to discontent that showed in actions, rather than whispered murmurs.

Still, Boromir tried to fight both that darkness growing in the East and amongst his people. He fought bravely out on the field, commanded his men with compassion and took to the streets to help where it was needed.

The Son of Gondor was there, the people knew.

And now the Son of Gondor was away. He had been traveling for a hundred and ten days when he finally arrived and he would have to make the return journey as well.

He felt every day, every minute, heavily in his soul. He knew that this was time he could not waste, because who would pick up his role while he was gone? Who would keep the darkness at bay and that little flicker of hope burning bright?

His soul knew that Faramir would try in his stead, but the people whispered that he was a Wizard’s pupil. That he did not care for his City and carried out rituals in the dark.

Naturally his own soldiers knew this not to be true and no one dared to say a word when Boromir was there to protect his little brother’s honor, but Boromir couldn't always be there and the longer he was gone, the more distrust would fester.

He shouldn’t be here, shouldn't be riding to an Elven city when there was so much he had to do at home, so much to defend.

They had only just reclaimed Osgiliath and he was certain the Dark Lord wished to retake the Gondor city that controlled the Anduin. It was only a matter of time and he should be there to talk strategy so that it wouldn’t come to pass.

It was all too much for one person to bear. Fighting on too many fronts, in both a physical war as well as a war of trust. He was not build for this, he wasn’t the one who could fight both and win, yet he had to try.

He did not know anything else.

His life had always been this war, ever since he was a child and first held Faramir and his mother made his swear to protect his little brother, ever since he remembered that first oath he ever took while they had to hide as their father fought of a group of Orcswhile they had been out riding in the forest.

So, he kept on going. For while it might be too much, might completely hopeless, might be foolish to try and might not even be his destiny, he had to do it. Because who else would step up in his stead if he ever fell down?

Thus he found himself in Rivendell asking for counsel, surrounded by people who seemed much surer of themselves and more comfortable with the danger that lay far from their borders.

The counsel revealed much to him. Not only was the riddle that had plagued both his dreams as those of Faramir explained, but there was hope again. There was a weapon, a thing to turn the tide of this hopeless war and an heir. Someone to ease Boromir’s burden and help to rally the troops and take up arms against the might of Mordor.

Though he could not convince the counsel that Gondor needed the weapon, he was able to convince them to tie his own faith to that of the Ring and take a place on the Fellowship.

He knew there were people wiser than him, many people were and he had long learned that. He was a warrior, not a philosopher. So, he was content to follow both the words of the wise as well as his King. To do what they deemed to be the best course of action to save Middle Earth and with that Gondor.

However, as the journey processed a dark voice started to prod at the hope that had finally managed to bloom.

It spoke to him of the fall of Gondor while he was gone, urging him to return before it was too late, even though it already was. Telling him how he would come back to the White City being overrun and no strength he had in him could turn the tide. It offered him a solution to the problems that had plagued his mind since his youth and grew as he did.

Still, he tried to tell himself that the voice was his darkest fears and that, while they were founded in reality, were not true and merely an extreme. He looked to Aragorn and chided himself for not believing in the prophesied return, for doubting his King.

But it was hard to trust in his King when it seemed his King did not want to be what he was destined to be. When he clung to being a Ranger, keeping close to the Elf that he treated as if he were his kin. When he did not want to listen to Boromir when the soldier attempted to talk about Minas Tirith and the struggles of Gondor.

The burdens that he had carried around all his life made the journey with him towards Mordor, staying in his heart, lowering his shoulders, while no one ever looked his way to ease them, for it was the burdens of his home and no one seemed to care about them.

And so the voice crept back into his mind, its words sounding more tempting and reasonable every time.

A small part of his mind told him that it was the Ring, but a bigger part argued that it did not matter how the thought first came to be, for it was the only viable answer.

He would have to go back to Gondor, he couldn't linger here. He couldn't waste his time on this quest, which was not only folly, but would prove to be their doom, no matter the outcome. They did not know if destroying the Ring would destroy Sauron’s forces and Minas Tirith could still be overrun by his army. But, the voice whispered, they do no care for Minas Tirith, so why would consider that outcome?

It was eating at him and he saw the others look at him with suspicion. He knew they did not trust him and he resented them for their distrust, for they were safe in their countries and his people were the ones dying, yet still they did not see why he wanted the Ring to go to Gondor.

The more their gazes hardened when the passed him, the harder it came to fight with the reasoning of his mind that seemed like his own, until he wondered why he was arguing it.

Then Mithrandir fell. The Wizard was plunged into the deep where no one returned from and the small chance they had of success died with him. It disappearedover the ridge and while they pushed on, it was not the same.

Boromir watched with resentment as Aragorn stood up as leader, his mind wondering why he was willing to lead this Fellowship, while abandoning his people. The resentment grew when he lead to them Lothlórien, an Elven city once more.

Aragorn did not care for the men of Gondor, he was faithful to the Elves and did not want to take the crown. He did not want to fight for Gondor and Boromir was alone as always, but this time he was far removed from home and he could not fight from here.

He had abandoned his home, his people. The realization hit him as a voice spoke in his mind about the fall of Gondor, confirming it had not just been his own fears, but even the Elves knew of the impending doom, hanging over the White City.

She also told him to have hope, but hope had long since perished in Minas Tirith. He’dhad hope, a long while ago and he thought he could have hope when he met Aragorn, but he now saw that the hope was misplaced. The Elves didn’t understand what he had to do. They thought themselves so wise, but they were not. They were blind.

He knew what he had to do.

The solution seemed so easy. He had already said that the hands of a Halfling were not safe and he could prove it by reaching out his hand. The others would have to understand. It was the only choice he had.

It was only after he had attempted to find his salvation that he realized that it had been him, who had been folly to think he could wield it, that it was his own mind that made him think that this was the answer.

But it was too late now and he could not take back what he had done. He could not undo the confirmation of proving that their mistrust in him was just. He had failed them all and he had been too blind to see.

Still, he tried to prove himself worthy of the burden of the protecting the Ring that had been placed on his shoulders by the Counsel.

He tried to protect the little ones, tried to follow the ordersof his King and see it through to the end, no matter if it would mean that his own life would be forfeit. He had risked his life plenty of times before and he would not see two people as joyful as Merry ad Pippin succumb to the horrors of war that had been his reality from birth.

When he fell, he knew he had failed once more. Merry and Pippin were being carried away and he did not know what had become of the others, if Frodo was safe.

And when Aragorn comforted him, he scarcely believed his King when he told him he did enough, that he had kept his honor. He tried in his final moments to live up what his King thought of him, he confessed what he had done and made sure that Aragorn knew that he would have followed him if had been able.

Boromir carriedburdenshe was not meant to carry for his entire life and as he finally closed his eyes, that burden eased from his shoulders and wrapped around Aragorns shoulders like a heavymantle.

The King had to return and take up the burdens meant for him.

~~

A/N:

I love everyone in the Fellowship and anything negative in here abt them is Boromir’s mind under the influence of the Ring

Also this was a mix between book and movie verse

[0reblogufufu0]

Spoilers Ahead For IPYTM Finale!

Time for the end to this insane ride! Pumped and full of so many feelings of not wanting to let this series go, IPYTM and ITSAY, knowing there will be no season three of continuation and that this is it, but I feel so lucky to have gotten into this series and been along for the good and the bad!  Let’s watch episode five!

Immediately already in the first couple minutes we get a lot of contrast here from the ending of the last episode. Last time, things ended on a very somber note, with both Teh and Oh-aew struggling with their break up. But, here, having time skipped over to their senior year, the first thing we see is a lot of thriving while we’re on Oh-aew’s side.  He’s successful in school as well as in his internship, leading already to other options for him once he graduates, and the scene we get with his friends, is light-hearted as they all lament their tiredness from the work of it all. But, it’s obvious there’s a satisfaction in the work, things have definitely gotten better since last time. Also, the flashcards from ITSAY made an appearance! I always love to see the call backs (though I waited the entire time to see a call back to Oh-aew’s nose thing, and it never did, so a bit disappointed) Something that really solidifies the difference between now and then is Oh-aew’s reaction to Teh, as well as their status as exes. It’s not bitter or hung up, but genuinely happy seeing him succeed enough to be getting TV interviews about his projects, and he says he’s Teh’s ex to his friends without it seeming at all rough, like it’s totally in the past now. It’s really sweet, because the smile Oh-aew gives is so soft you’d think there was nothing between the two that was at all negative.  He’s really grown. But it also goes to show that after everything that happened Oh-aew’s feelings for Teh didn’t divulge into hatred, he’s still wishes him the best and wants him to thrive. But, oh my gosh how that contrasts with Teh’s condition is so great. Like, while Oh-aew is feeling more himself than he ever has, relishing in the life he’d always sought to have, even if some pieces had to be knocked out of place to achieve it, everything is falling apart for Teh in a way he can’t run from this time. When we meet him in his dressing room, just the coloring of the frame shows you the difference. Oh-aew’s space with his friends is vibrant, soft, and bright, while Teh’s is sort of dim, filled with neutral colors and soft lights. He talks with Top about feeling like he doesn’t want to do anything anymore, not his acting work nor his thesis which he’s struggling to come up with an idea for, and it’s a really big deal because Teh’s one consistent aspiration has always been chasing acting as far as he can, but now he’s achieved a relative fame and wants to take a break because the feeling is so not right. He says he feels like he’s missing something, and it’s obvious not just from last episode but from the conversation he has with Oh-aew later that it’s their relationship. Before, even if things were in shambles and changing, Teh could always turn back to Oh-aew being there with him, even if sometimes that was what was so overwhelming was turning back to face his boyfriend who kept on changing, Oh-aew was never missing in his core, but now that he’s basically entirely by himself with nothing feeling good for him to accomplish or strive towards, he feels how important that was now more than ever. I just gotta say wow to the scenes where Teh and Oh-aew meet again for the first time, there’s so much in it just with mannerisms or the way they speak. Oh-aew speaks with confidence, he answers Teh’s questions quickly when he asks them and doesn’t stutter or pause when he goes to ask some of his own. When he talks about Teh’s life he sounds and feels genuinely curious and happy for him in a way he really only can because he’s so sure of himself in it. He knows how he feels, how he felt, how he’s grown from then and that it’s time to move on, and he’s taken steps to do that. He’s really become his own person and it looks great on him. Meanwhile, Teh is awkward, averts his eyes whenever things hit too close to their past and dances around asking what he really wants to ask Oh-aew with stammers or lead on questions (like when he says Oh-aew can bring a plus one to Hoon’s wedding to see if he has a new boyfriend). It always feels like he’s kind of waiting for Oh-aew to say something to let him know he’s still thinking about him, that he feels how Teh does. But, Oh-aew speaks to Teh like they’re old friends, all the while Teh’s eyes linger on Oh-aew when he leaves, when he speaks, he leans in to sniff him when his head is down and he’s desperate to stay with him for as long as he can. It’s obvious what this has done to Teh and watching Oh-aew deny him what he’s looking for makes you feel pity for Teh and proud of Oh-aew all at the same time. It’s super great to watch when the facade breaks sometimes, though. Because, you can definitely see that some of Oh-aew’s confidence is definitely fake it till you make it type. He’s unsure at first whenever Teh makes his way into his space, and you can see how he still isn’t entirely ready or prepared to talk about relationships again with Teh, especially so when it’s revealed Teh broke up with his girlfriend weeks ago because they didn’t share the same thoughts anymore. I also think you can see it in their relationship status’. Though Teh isn’t in a relationship anymore, he’d opened himself up to someone else (though I think it was a Jai thing again, where it was just to have something to cling to which was familiar), while Oh-aew is single, turning away any chance of relationship (even when his friend hints to subtly liking him) even while he acts as though he is over Teh. It brings up bitter memories and Oh-aew ends up going deep into scolding Teh for not having fought harder for her or changed himself some to fit her when she couldn’t for him, it’s all spoken like he’s asking Teh why he didn’t do those things for him, like he’s telling him what exactly he wanted Teh to do for him when things got hard instead of what happened. But things ends on a warm note for their meeting, even if it’s obvious their both healing, they’re definitely not in any way holding resentment for the other, but rather a regret that seems to hang over both their heads for how things turned out, or a disappointment. Now, I just want to say, the play thing was a bad idea. Not just for showing to Oh-aew but also the play just seemed so bland? Like a spoken autobiography lacking a ton of context, I’m not sure Teh is passing with that work. But, for Teh, too, it was such a bad idea to force all that on Oh-aew. He thought it would be like a apology to Oh-aew through the play, that he’d be able to convey all his feelings in a way that wouldn’t have to be spoken recklessly in the moment and that Oh-aew would be able to understand him better, but again, he’s acting selfishly. He’s thinking about what he wants Oh-aew to see, what he wants him to hear, to understand and to even feel towards him but he never thinks maybe Oh-aew doesn’t have feelings for him anymore, or doesn’t want to get back together even if he does. Teh has spent all his waking hours feeling like something is missing without Oh-aew then becomes completely enamored with him all over again when they meet in person for the first time, it’s hard for him to believe Oh-aew hasn’t spent as much time on him as he has on Oh-aew, that he didn’t want everything to turn out differently and for them to still be together. But, Oh-aew has spent his time away from Teh trying his best to move on from him, to work himself into a place he can be happy for himself and for Teh without having those things be exclusive or his memories bitter, he’d been focusing on his gains and relishing in them, all up until Teh comes to crash the party with his presence and Oh-aew struggles not to fall back into him and what they had before, what he felt before when it ended. Still, he shows up to support Teh on his play when he receives a ticket, he’s being supportive and isn’t pushing Teh away or forcing the past on him when they meet, still, Teh forces his feelings on Oh-aew, what he felt again seeing him for the first time, his regrets, his struggles, and it’s all selfish even if he frames it in a way of wanting to make up to Oh-aew. He obviously doesn’t mean it as such, but it is the truth of the matter. It takes little for him to go back into the relationship because Oh-aew didn’t hurt him. He doesn’t have to make the decision to trust him again, trust his love, trust what he says about him because that was never a doubt for him, but Oh-aew has to think about those things in order to open himself up again. Bas was so cute when he showed up I screamed silently into the night because he is so baby faced I just want to squish his cheeks and hug him! He comes back to serve as some advice for Oh-aew on whether or not to take Teh back after he tells Teh he doesn’t want to get back together in the parking lot during the play. They talk about whether or not things can get better if you get back together after a break up and if Oh-aew’s feelings for Teh are good enough to warrant them getting back together or if there’s something better for him out there, whether he should allow Teh to ‘win’ by seeing he is still hung up over him or if moving on is better for his own sake. It’s short, but I’m just glad we get to see Bas. The scene feels weird a little, since we just saw Oh-aew having such an emotional reaction to the question of getting back together and now he is considering it, but I think it can be tied up to his feelings coming crashing down on him after he meets Teh again after all that time and even more so once he has to relive the failure of their relationship, so he’s stuck and conflicted with all these feelings on hand. This feeling of the revelation not exactly feeling right lasts all the way to the end, when they do get back together, because though it’s been built to for a little, we don’t even get the entire episode for it because they had so much to do this finale. But, okay, whatever, alright, I can’t stay mad at it. I love Oh-aew, I love Teh, I love ITSAY, I love IPYTM, there are flaws in all of those, but I love them still, I’m happy we got a happy ending, really. I was happy to see Teh’s mom again and Hoon, because they’re both a delight, was glad to see Teh’s friends and Khim making an appearance at the end, too. There are many upsets with how things padded out in them getting back together, especially the scene where it all comes together, because though I like Teh listening to Oh-aew, it skims over a lot of the issues we see reoccuring from before in this episode, so who can say if their relationship will be okay from here or not. I personally feel they may break up again but will not be able to stay from one another, so they may not be able to actually settle down until they’re old and grey and know each other best to avoid what has caused them trouble time and time again. Anyway, this was a ride and I definitely won’t stop talking about this forever, but yeah, it was the end! Goodbye to the crew, and the show, I’m gonna miss them so much and will think of them every time I play Skyline on my kalimba (it hits so different hearing the song this episode knowing how to play it now) and eat anything with coconuts or smell them, or see red and blue, or draw the sunset or when there’s a full moon or their songs come up on my playlist. I’ve accomplished a lot because of this series, accomplished a lot during, and I appreciate it so much. I always give so much grief to people blinded by nostalgia, but this is my exception, because I will always think positively of this series despite it all. Good bye! I am going to miss making time for this on thursdays and writing these at ungodly times of the morning! Thank you to all who worked on the series and read these reviews, I’ll miss it all! <3